#hope this all made sense! i hope i didnt get too technical sdkjhasdkjsad

[geoffrard]

if you don't mind, could you spare some pointers about archive work? i would love to try some but i honestly have no idea where to start.

happy to give some guidance since archiving is something i'm passionate about :)

my experience with archive work lies largely outside of mcr specifically, and subject area 100% impacts the archiving experience. that disclaimer in mind, i'm a history grad student, work with physical & digital archives, and managed a smaller one for a few years. on the fandom side of things, i run @thursdayarchive with nic @raytorosaurus (who is also a great resource for the specifics of mcr archiving & who suggested some advice given here!).

but you definitely don't have to have much experience to archive! archiving, at its root, is about assembling materials relevant and organizing them in a way that allows other people to access them. And this work is super, super important (esp since so much of mcr's history dates back to an era of the internet that is rapidly disappearing) & definitely doesn't require you to develop a sophisticated skill set.

There are three basic things to take into consideration when you're starting to archive:

Artifacts: What you collect

Personal organization: How you will keep track of what you find

The repository: How you will share your archive

Artifacts: Collect materials

Finding materials to share is the meat of the archiving experience, and often it's what takes the longest time. It can also be a little intimidating at first, especially considering the amount of unsourced photos that regularly float around mcr spaces. some notes on that end (mainly concerning photographs, since that tends to be the currency the mcr fandom deals in):

first, you don't have to just archive photos--the range of interesting materials related to mcr is vast. an archive might include photos, interviews, videos, magazine features, music, etc.

Consider what gaps might exist within fandom archives. MCR fans have run a number of really great archives in the past, so some work might not need to be done. Of course, those materials might not get circulated--and recovering it would be a worthwhile task. Perhaps recent interviews haven't been compiled and transcribed. Perhaps you can't believe that people aren't talking about a certain two-minute excerpt from a Frank podcast from five years ago. Perhaps you've noticed a dearth of photos of Mikey from 2010 in fandom spaces. Do what is interesting to you, but build on past archival work when you can. Honestly I can really see a need to keep track of a lot of the fan videos from the recent tour.

Decide if you want your archiving to center around a certain theme--like, a certain member of the band, a certain type of media, etc.

KEEP TRACK OF SOURCE CREDIT. the mcr fandom has been awful at keeping track of photo sources in the past, and as a result many of the most of the iconic photographs have been totally divorced from their source. Also, make sure that the person you're crediting is the actual original source.

On that note: while it might not seem like a big deal, reposting without a source is. Music photographers make their living by licensing their photos, and if a for-profit publication wants to use those photos but doesn't know photographer, they can't, and the photographer loses out on business. Non-professional photos really should be sourced, too. Fans in a photo might not want to have their picture spread around for a number of reasons (this specifically has happened in the mcr fandom, where a collection of photographs were reposted without permission from a private photobucket).

It's always easier to find photos at their source rather than sourcing photos that you already have. A lot of photographers post their pictures on their own archives, often on places like getty images, photobucket, flickr, and their personal websites. a lot of these sites are searchable, and they're a decent place to start.

keep track of the names of photographers and interviewers that you see often

familiarize yourself with archive.org. it is your friend when you encounter dead links.

it's also worthwhile to have a decent grasp on the mcr timeline, or at least know where to reference it. since i have a shit brain for remembering specific dates, i generally reference concertarchives (though it can be a little unreliable at times and warrants some cross-referencing).

Personal organization: Keep track of what you find

When you locate something you'd like to archive, you'll want to keep track of the information associated with it--in archiving, we call that metadata. This can be a bit of a headache in the moment, but integrating your own organizing systems is a lifesaver in the long run. Consider:

what kinds of information might interest your audience? Typically, I include source, date, location, people included (if it's a photo), and any other context that might be relevant to the source, if I can find it.

what is the easiest way to track that information? I keep a detailed spreadsheet for that purpose, but you might find it useful to archive the item onto your repository immediately. there's no one right way to do this step, but having a standard practice can help you avoid confusion or accidentally sharing incorrect details.

The repository: share your archive

The whole point of archiving is to share materials with other people--though this is certainly easier said that done. Your repository doesn't have to be anything more than your blog, but it deserves a decent amount of thought. Things to think about:

Where will you host your archive? Most of us will use Tumblr, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you don't have to. Places like dreamwidth and google drive can be useful platforms as well. If you stick with tumblr, consider if you want to use the blog you already use, or if you want to start a new blog for a clean slate.

You don't have to repost the content that you want to archive. Making lists of content by topic is incredibly important, and there is a decent amount of content that you wouldn't be able to upload on most platforms because of size and length restrictions.

How will you organize your repository? The easier someone can access something they're looking for on an archive, the more they will use it. Using specific tags to indicate certain features of an archive post is generally the most intuitive organization method, but you can also use other systems (like hyperlinks) if they work for you.

What kinds of information do you want people to find on your archive? Generally, if you use tags, you'll want to come up with a consistent system for general pieces of info like people, form of media, time period, etc. If you have a more specific archive topic or an interest, like you really want to log Mikey's sock collection during the bullets era or something, consider adding tags for that. You can have fun with these :)

Make it easy to figure out what kind of organization system your archive uses. This might mean a taglist, a general explanation of your methods, or some combination thereof.

I'm sure that I missed some points here, and as I said, a lot of this advice is a little more general because I haven't spent a lot of time doing archiving for MCR specifically, and it mainly pertains to archiving through photo uploading, but I hoped it answered some questions for anyone interested in getting into archiving. As always, i'm happy to answer any questions based on my own experiences :) happy archiving!!!