Scottish Community Archives Toolkit

The Scottish Community Archives Toolkit has been developed by SCA as part of its contribution to the AHRC-funded Outreach to Ownership project. SCA supported community groups around Scotland who needed help starting or managing their local archive. SCA is grateful to Historic England and Historic Environment Scotland for their support.

This Toolkit is divided up into seven sections. You can dip in and out of each section as you need to and you can go straight to the links to other resources or the customisable templates.

First Steps will help you get started if you have little or no experience of working with archives. It includes information on what are community archives, setting up a community archive, sustainability and volunteer management. Collections Management will help you to develop the skills and tools you need to manage your collections effectively. This includes choosing what you will collect, how you will collect it and what information you need to keep. Cataloguing will help you to develop skills in cataloguing your collections. Collections Care will help you ensure that your collections survive for a long time by explaining how to handle your collections properly, protect them, manage environmental conditions, keep your collections secure, prevent damage and when to call in an expert conservator. Digital Records will help you to preserve digital records and digitised (scanned) material and make them available in the long-term. Sharing Your Collection will help you provide access to your collections, suggest ways of making your catalogues available online, and help you to develop talks, exhibitions and other outreach activities. Legal Matters contains basic guides to copyright, data protection and GDPR.