Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Technological competencies are required for most areas of an archivist’s professional practice. How does an archivist’s level of technological competency affect their engagement with records, researchers, stakeholders and colleagues? What are the core technical knowledge, skills, and abilities that the profession requires in order to engage with our stakeholders in a meaningful way? Archivists must engage with their communities where they are and how they want to receive information, which is increasingly online.

Traditionally, archivists have engaged in arrangement and description and created finding aids to be used as guides to fonds and collections. The creation of finding aids is a traditional archival function that continues today. The availability of technology, such as a databases, is changing the way that archivists conduct their work. This research examines the tools that archivists use to answer reference questions and begins to look at the following issues. What other tools do archivists use when they assist their researchers? Should the creation of finding aids continue to be a priority for archivists or has the time come …