This week my homework for my Foundations of Library and Information Science class led me to the Society of American Archivists website where I learned that October 30th is Ask an Archivist Day. 

That means that archivists from around the world (mostly U.S., but I got responses from one person in Canada and another in Ireland) were on Twitter answering questions tagged with #AskAnArchivist. I asked six questions and received a number of thoughtful and helpful responses to each.

I've included my questions and the archivists' answers below. Though I asked six questions, I've only included the ones that would be of most interest to my readers. I've also included links to each question in my Twitter feed in case you want to engage with me or check out the links people tweeted me. 

Here's my first question: 

I was actually inspired to ask this question since my roommate and I found a box of love letters from 1913 on one of our dumpster diving excursions. I wish I were joking, but at least they're now safely in my care. 

And my next question:

I recently interviewed a librarian at a well established museum (post to come soon) who recently took the position and one of her goals as the new librarian is to set up an institutional archive--an archive with information about the museum itself, not just its contents, which could include records of major donors, member newsletters, publications written by the curatorial staff, and more. 

And my next question: 

I was glad to hear of several people already working with digital or hybrid (both digital and physical) archives because I plan to go into digital preservation. Sounds like it's the way of the future to me! 

And my next question:

I asked this question a bit late in the day, so I'll update this post if I get more responses. 

And my last (and most fun) question:

Did you participate in Ask an Archivist day? If so, what did you ask?
If not, what would you have wanted to ask?
Tell me in the comments!