Beasts in your collections?!

Zeeuws Archief : Asian and African animals, 1770-1780. Cat.nr. HTAM-H-104.

What?!
"NO!", is our first response when people ask: Do you have beasts in your collections or depots? Of course not! We keep our depots very clean and take very good care of our heritage collections! No mice, no spiders, no flies, no rats, no silverfishes, no fleas, no bookworms, we don't give them any chance to creep in our collections and depots.

World fauna in our collections
That's what we think. But... we DO have lots of beasts in our collections and depots! Think of the huge seamonsters on oceanmaps, the very precise drawings of insects in fauna books, the sweet pictures of cats in albums amicorum, the loyal dogs at the feet of our rulers on paintings and sculptures. We have the entire fauna of the world in our collections!

World Animal Day, October 4th
On October 4th each year, we celebrate World Animal Day. Let's dive into our collections to search for colourful fishes. Let's make a safari tour through our depots to catch wild animals. Let's have a stroll through all the bookshelves to discover beautiful insects that hide there. Let's have a great flight through our storagerooms and catch up with some amazing birds. Make a silent tour at night to spot the very rare unicorn. And let's show all the animals we find in our depots and collections to the world on World Animal Day!

Twitter event #heritagebeasts
On October 4th, World Animal Day, Follow An Archive and Ask Archivists will organize a Twitter event: #heritagebeasts. We invite all heritage institutions to join us! So we ask the organizers of Follow A Museum, Follow A Library, Ask A Curator, Follow Heritage to join in and spread the word about #heritagebeasts to your followers!

Join #herigagebeasts at October 4th!
Of course all people are welcome to join the Twitter event #heritagebeasts on October 4th! Create a Twitter account and tweet the beasts in your favourite collection!

Let's have a beastly good World Animal Day on October 4th with the Twitter event #heritagebeasts!

Follow #heritagebeasts
Tweets about "#heritagebeasts"

Let´s celebrate International Archives Day on June 9th!

It´s allmost there again! The greatest day of the year - International Archives Day!

We know it´s on a saturday - but let´s celebrate anyway! Let´s show off our archival holdings, knowledge and services this year. We invite you to tweet your most precious document, your best online services and finest webcontent, the coolest pictures of users socializing and using the collections.

Show us - and the whole twittersphere - what you´re proud of in your archives! Let us know if you´re in - and if you will answer questions from users again.

We´re looking forward to another great Archives Day on the tag #archday12

Valentine's Day 2012 in archives

Archives are full of love stories. So let´s share them for Valentine's Day!

We can find romantic stuff about deep and eternal feelings. Some may involve famous people and some convey the emotions of the everyday man or woman, others could be documents about love, that has gone bad. And the documents probably comes from all parts of society, high and low alike.

When we examine the collections, some of the greatest stories of love may not even involve a man and a woman. “Love” could also be the love of ones children, parents, God, siblings – or the love of a cause, that brings passion and great emontions into the life of an individual.

We believe, that YOUR archive has a lot of amazing stories about one of the most amazing human feelings in its collections. And we encourage you to share them on February 14th.

Put some of your documents of love on Flickr or Picasa, make a video for YouTube, create an album on Facebook… use any platform you like, just tweet about it, using the hashtag #loveheritage.

We hope you will play along – for the love of archives – and invite our colleagues in museums and libraries to join as well. We bet, that they have collections full of love as well!

If you´re joining us and want to share a romatic find or loving item from your collection, please use the comment box of the #AskArchivists blog to write the name and country of your institution, as well as your Twitterhandle.

Charlotte and Anneke

#AskArchivists Day: June 9, 2011

More attention for archives and archivists on twitter?
#FollowAnArchive Day was such a great day that we asked our followers: should we start an other archives action on twitter, i.e. AskArchivists? We got a lot of positive respons to our question. 'YES! It would be great!', 'More attention for archivists on twitter!', et cetera.

#AskArchivists Day
Well... Is't on! The new action on twitter is #AskArchivists on June 9th. On that day it is also International Archives Day, Organised by ICA, the International Congress on Archives.

Ask Away on #AskArchivists Day!
Follow @AskArchivists on Twitter
Find more information about #AskArchivists on the blog
Follow the hastag #AskArchivists on Twubs
The hashtag #AskArchivists is saved by Twapperkeeper.

Join #AskArchivists and have a great day on June 9, 2011!

Outcome #followanarchive survey

Charlotte made a powerpoint presentation of the outcome of the #followanarchive survey.
It was a great day! Thanks everyone for joining!

How did #followanarchive work out?

Start of #followanarchive day in Australia
Every one who joined #followanarchive day share the opinion: November 12, 2010 was a great day for archives and people who loves archives and their collections!
The 'GO FOR IT' was given on November 12 Australian time, when the rest of the world still struggeled with November 11 ;-) The #followanarchive list of Oceania showed 11 Australian archives. It was a smashing start of #followanarchive day! Archives found each other, tweeps and archives found each other, talked to one another and got into contact.
Twittering archives and tweeps showed great appreciation about the participation of the Australian National Archives who were very happy with their followers on their first day on twitter:

Thanks to everyone for your support on our first day! You've made us this happy... #followanarchive

Bradley Headland, working at the National Archives of Australia, was very enthousiastic and we asked him to write a blogpost for the #followanarchive blog about his experiences and thoughts about #followanarchive day. And he did! Look here and read how he got the CAARA delegates on twitter on November 12! Bradley tweeted:

The records we hold tell the story of who we are, where we came from and how we got here.

#followanarchive day in the Middle-East, Africa and Europe
In the mean time November 12 had started in the Middle-East, Africa and Europe. We couldn't find any twittering archives in Asia.
It was fabulous to see how the archives did their utmost best to recommend their collections. In The Netherlands, the UK and the Nordic countries there were a lot of participating archives. Archivists in countries with only a few archives on twitter or none at all, were also joining. Archives, archivists and followers recommended many archives to there followers and told them the reasons why they should follow archives.
In Spain we couldn't find any archives on twitter. How much joy we all had when Paco Fernández Cuesta, Historian and Technical Assistant in the Archives of the Royal Chancery of Valladolid, came up with two Spanish archives! Sierra Pambley and the Municipal Archives Arganda del Rey in Madrid.
We challenged French archives to act:

French #archivists! @pacofernandez came up with two twittering Spanish archives. Can you do the same for France? #followanarchive

And... a French archive got on twitter! Thanks to the efforts of Pauline Moirez Project Manager Internet / Multimedia at th Archives of France, The National Archives of France came on twitter and joined #followanarchive day. They ended up with 50 followers on their first day on twitter! They tweeted:

Les Archives françaises arrivent sur Twitter ! Bon Follow an Archive Day à tous ! #followanarchive

In Africa especially the SABC Radio Archives were very active on November 12! They followed al lot of archives and archivists over the world and were very pleased with #followanarchive day, as all participating archives were ;-)

#followanarchive day in the America's
In the mean time the America's (South America and North America (we couldn't find a twittering archive in Central America) had joined #followanarchive day. With only two participating archives in Latin America, there came a lot of tweets from Brazil.
Many archivists and tweeps who are fond of archives were on twitter that day.
PickeringChatto in the UK tweetet:

Amazed at the number of archives/archivists on Twitter - they’re taking over! etc etc.

And North America also did great things on #followanarchive day! Archives showed photographs of there oldest document, there most special map, their funniest photograph or cartoon, etc.

Archivists are so cool!
Some tweetqoutes:
A follower tweeted:

I didn't know archives had so much to offer!

@dykeaquarterly tweeted:

@followanarchive thanks. You inspired me to start an archive twitter, rather than using the one for my business.

A follower tweeted:

I love how the event put me in touch with archivists world wide in compact time. And broadened the awareness of archives!

Funny jokes about archives also appeared. @mandahill tweeted:

My favourite #archives joke for #followanarchive day: Where did Noah keep his bees? In the ark-hives!

@AFSCMEArchivist tweeted:

thanks for the follow. Archivists are so cool.

Archives rock!
It was a phenomenal, fabulous #followanarchive day! We've enjoyed every second of it!
Thanks to all archives, archivists an followers who made this day one of the most splendid day in archives history!
One of the tweeps shouted: 'ARCHIVES ROCK!' This tweet was retweeted many times. And we agree: 'Archives rock'!
We will add some statistics on this blog too and of course the outcome of the survey many of you filled in, thanks!
Also thanks every one who wrote (or is going to write) a blogpost or webs article about #followanarchive day. Much appreciated!

Charlotte, Bente, Poulus & Anneke

#askanarchivist day or #askarchivists day 2011
Together with several other people we are thinking of the possibility of organizing an #askanarchivist day or #askarchivists day. We think about June 9, when it is International Archives Day. How do you think about this proposition?

ARCHIVES ROCK!
ARCHIVISTS ARE SO COOL!

Posted by Anneke

Followanarchive Survey