Advertisements were placed, interviews held, and now we look forward to the start of a new intake of trainees this coming September.

As the Archives Assistant at the Oxford University Archives I will have the rare pleasure of still being in post to greet and assist my successor in settling in to their new position. In light of this, I have given a good deal of thought to what it might be useful to tell them beyond what they will need to know to do the job. The advice I received from my predecessor was invaluable and, to pass that on, I have compiled a list of tips for aspiring archivists.

The first thing that I would suggest is to subscribe to the JISC mailing list, JISC ARCHIVES-NRA. You can subscribe from their website. I recommend opting for the digest, otherwise you will get a lot of emails in your inbox that might not be relevant! The daily digest email gives you the top discussions going on via JiscMail. Sometimes these include job vacancies and requests for volunteers, as well as news about what is going on at other archives, interesting articles and discussions and advice.

It is also worth asking to be put on the mailing list for the ARA New Professionals Trainees Section. You will get news about meetings and talks designed to support trainees in the Archives sector. Heads of archives postgraduate courses often give talks at these meetings, and it is a great opportunity to meet other trainees and visit different archives. The next meet up is on 20th June 2016 and will be visiting the M&S Archive and ITV. Use the contact details on the New Professionals Trainees webpage to ask to be added to the list and enquire about spaces at the next meeting.
You might also consider following the ARA New Professionals blog, Off the Record, where you can read posts by current professionals who discuss how they got started in Archives and they also include write ups of the trainee meetings which can be very useful if you were not able to attend.

Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library also have a blog, I would particularly advise following this if you are coming to the Bodleian as a trainee but it is also interesting in its own right and other trainees and volunteers might find it interesting.

Archive Trainees UK, part of the ARA New Professionals Trainees section, is a Facebook group that is worth joining if you are on Facebook. Another Facebook group that I highly recommend is the ICA New Professionals (International Council on Archives) group. They put out a lot of thoughtful content and invite debate and discussion.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has advice for sources of information for trainees and volunteers who are pre-course but looking to become professional Archivists.

This has been a very wordy post, and I’m afraid I have not had the time to source any relevant pictures to accompany the advice, so here is an archives selfie!