Archiving

Ross Woods, 2021-22

You have been appointed the archivist for Baptist Churches of Western Antarctica Inc., which is a local not-for-profit. The intention is that related Baptist churches and individuals will donate old records after any legal relevance has expired, so that they will be useful for historical studies.

Your role is to collect, organize and store the records. However, you end up gathering many boxes of paper, and some of it looks useless.

  1. Somebody’s Grandfathers’s wedding photographs
  2. Board minutes
  3. Annual general meeting minutes
  4. General correspondence
  5. Financial reports
  6. Sermon notes
  7. Weekly bulletins
  8. Personnel records
  9. Old magazine articles
  10. Sound and video recordings
  11. Documents of old land purchases and sales
  12. Information about church leaders
  13. Information about opening new churches
  14. Baptisms
  15. Anniversary celebrations
  16. Information about closing churches

Question: What do you keep and what do you throw out? Explain the reasons for your criteria.