ASA ‘Keeping Archives’ Short Courses

2023-2024

Subject Area: Archival practice

Format: Online Courses

Length: 6 Hours

Audience: Students and Archivists

Organisers: Australian Society of Archivists

 

“Keeping Archives” is a series of short courses offered by the Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) through their website. It is a self-paced learning series that consists of learning modules, videos, and short quizzes to test your knowledge. Throughout the modules there are external links and sources to encourage additional research and learning. The topics covered by the series include:

1. Introduction to Records and Archives
2. Appraisal
3. Context Control and Documentation
4. Physical Management and Preservation
5. Access
6. Digital Records and Archives

 

I had completed several archival and recordkeeping courses offered as electives throughout my degree, and as a student member of the ASA I was offered the opportunity to complete a series of short courses designed to provide more information and learning on what archives were and how they managed their collections. I was excited to learn more about archiving as well as the techniques and procedures archivists employ, which made the courses a perfect activity to participate in. These courses helped me to understand the importance of archives while providing knowledge of the sector through informative videos from practitioners from different institutions and organisations. From these I was able to place what I was learning through my elective archiving courses into a real-life workplace context. 

 

Throughout the different modules we were given external links for extra reading and learning opportunities, which was informative and useful. Several of these links and extra readings were relevant and able to be used in several of the assessment tasks from archival and record-keeping subjects during the course of my degree. After completing the courses I decided to look into completing my professional placement within an archival environment so that I could gain practical experience of what I had been learning. Overall, the courses were able to provide a good grounding in understanding archives as well as providing helpful and informative external links to websites, books, and videos and has prompted me to look at completing my post-graduate degree in archive and record management.