outreach

Notes
Outreach takes on many forms and has many terms and phrases associated with it: educational programming, public relations, marketing, publicity, promotion. At times it is equated with advocacy, but as noted by Kathleen Roe, “Not all outreach activities are specifically directed to accomplishing awareness or advocacy goals. Yet each provides an opportunity to incorporate, at a minimum, improving awareness of the value of archives.” [Advocacy and Awareness for Archivists (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2019), 12.]

Read It in Context

1. “By very broadly defining the term 'outreach' to encompass all activities and programs promoting a greater awareness or use of archives, the committee hoped to challenge traditional thinking on the subject. An open-ended definition might lead archivists to look more closely at their own programs to rediscover those activities that serve to increase client awareness and appreciation of the work and collections of the archives.” (Pederson 1978, 155)
2. “To increase our service to society, indeed, just to maintain it—just to survive in the highly competitive, fast-changing world of our times—we spend increasing portions of our day reminding our various publics how archival endeavor contributes to their lives. Promotion / marketing / outreach—call it what you will—this now is as essential an activity of archival enterprise as gathering, appraising, and so on through the litany, ever were. In an increasingly complex and financially uncertain world, we must continually sell our service. Without promotion / marketing / outreach, we jeopardize our existence, our opportunity to do those uniquely archival activities that alone used to constitute ‘archival work.’” (Gracy 1985, 17)

Narrower Terms
exhibition
program

Related Terms
advocacy
inreach

Categories
Advocacy, Outreach, Reference and Public Services