n.the activities conducted by an archives within its parent institution to raise awareness and gain support for its programsFreeman 1991, 89Recent surveys suggest that among regional archives the most popular form of outreach is the education of other archivists, not programs for the public. Inreach, to coin a new word; service to ourselves, not the public.Germain 2006, 221In addition to outreach, the library also needs to conduct inreach, which includes advertising and promoting reference resouces within the library.SAA 2014aArchivist Alison Stankrauff, a lone arranger (and also one of ten reference librarians), is doing inreach to her fellow librarians and library staff to talk more about what the archives has, how the archives receives materials, how that content is organized, what student interns are working on, and how the materials can be accessed.Greene 2015, 12But advocacy is not just externally directed, or at least it shouldn’t be. Rather you should be “a constant ambassador” to your boss and other resource allocators. Internal advocacy (once upon a time referred to as “inreach”) is just as important to the success of archival programs as external advocacy.Caust-Ellenbogen, Kativa, and Miller 2016, 22Just as important, by making staff contacts and raising the visibility of the archives within your institution, you have performed important inreach.
Notes
Inreach is a more recent term than outreach, which is nearly ubiquitous within the archives profession. Evidence of the term appears in the early 1990s in the literature of a few professions, but the term still does not appear in any major dictionary of English. Inreach is simply outreach that focuses efforts within an organization.
