Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a digital archivist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Digital Archivist is liable for collecting, storing and maintaining digital archives that contain historically significant collections of documents and records. This position is often useful to museums, libraries, government agencies, corporations, and foundations. Here, information like photographs, electronic data, films, clips or recordings is collected and organized.
More responsibilities include selecting and storing records and information that is valuable, following acceptable industry related standards to store data, managing large volumes of data, assisting the researchers to find the data they are looking for, analyzing and researching records required, organizing files using the cataloging process and preparing them for public access, writing descriptions on the preserved records for easier accessibility, creating multiple copies of the registers to ensure it is well backed up for future availability and use.
Core Skills Required to be a Digital Archivist
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A digital archivist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Dealing with Difficult People:
Dealing with Difficult People is learning how to tactfully calm down an obnoxious person who is either verbally attacking you or stealthily criticizing you or your professional contribution.
A Digital Archivist must learn how to combat and tone the demanding customers or staff who are competing for power, privilege or spotlight which defy logic not with fights but with the truth and more listening skills as well as lots of patience.
Networking:
Networking is the process that encourages an exchange of information and ideas among individuals or groups that share the same interests.
A Digital Archivist is required to establish policies and procedures that govern networking to form professional relationships that will boost the future of business and employment prospects while maintaining regular contact with each other to gain each other's trust thus developing few quality relationships.
Creativity:
Creativity is the skill of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality through the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between unrelated phenomena and generate solutions.
A Digital Archivist should be able to think, then reproduce ideas and act on them to bring awareness of what was currently hidden and point to a new life that will progress the business to new heights.
Flexibility:
Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.
A Digital Archivist needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.
Potential for Advancement:
The potential for Advancement is the ability to make something better by being more skillful, more efficient, and more useful to produce high-quality results.
A Digital Archivist needs to invest in his employees by creating room for individual advancement that encourages stronger job performance because it positions the employees to demonstrate just how well they can perform their jobs through motivation and feedback that are critical to the employee performance.
Project and Goal Focus:
Project and Goal Focus is setting your mind and heart on things that matter and add value to your life against those things that add no value at all or of little value.
A Digital Archivist ought to learn of early hiccups that may cause distraction and get to motivate the employees early enough to see the projects completed promptly and in good condition.
Time Management:
Time Management is the capacity for an individual to assign specific time slots to activities as per their importance and urgency to make the best possible use of time.
A Digital Archivist must schedule each task within a stipulated period for each employee and ensure all the tasks are completed promptly thus actually teaching the staff the value of time and how to utilize it for the interest of the business and their growth.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
A Digital Archivist should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Process Improvement:
Process Improvement is the creation of new processes or improving the existing ones that will work and take your corporation to the next level.
A Digital Archivist must maintain the continuous improvements in the workplace that are favorable to the current investors, potential investors, and stock owners while working with methods that can serve as a foundation for future business decisions causing a profitable growth.
Technology Trend Awareness:
Technology Trend Awareness is staying updated with the useful upcoming trends that can serve your business better and easier.
A Digital Archivist must be able to look back at the setbacks and success of the company and consider new possibilities for the future by the use of technology looking for a better, faster, more practical approach that can make business more productive.
Hard Skills Required to be a Digital Archivist
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A digital archivist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.