Archives 101

As university archivist, Lois Hamill is head of the Special Collections and University Archives at Northern Kentucky University. She has earned the rank of full professor. She has been a practicing archivist for twenty years working with academic records, photograph and local history collections, and local government records. She previously worked for a local historical society, local government and a public library. She holds a masters degree in History/Archival Methods from the University of Massachusetts Boston, a masters in library and information science from Simmons College, Boston, is a certified archivist and has earned the Society of American Archivists’ Digital Archives Specialist certification. She also attended Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

She has spoken at national, regional and state conferences on diverse archival, history and library topics, taught a photograph workshop at the annual American Association of State and Local History conference, and state workshops on archival arrangement and collections care. She was the principle investigator for an NEH Sustaining Cultural Heritage Grant to create and maintain a sustainable preservation environment through monitoring and analysis of the existing HVAC system in order to mitigate humidity problems and save energy; and a security assessment grant. As a successful grant writer, she has also been asked to serve on several federal grant review panels. She has co-managed several digitization projects, development of an institutional repository and installation of compact shelving.

Hamill’s focus on archival arrangement and description dates to her master’s thesis, which was followed by an independent study analyzing a library collection management module’s compliance with archival theory when applied to photographs. Her award winning first book focuses heavily on arrangement and description and photography but broadly encompasses her other experiences. A subsequent second book, Archival Arrangement and Description: Analog to Digital starts with analog records and progresses to digital records, integrating information and standards in a unique manner.