October is National Archives Month - If You Love History, Thank an Archivist

October is National Archives Month.

Archivists are the people who work, largely "behind the scenes" to collect, catalog and preserve the many documents that a museum holds.

Cataloging is far more than just creating an inventory. Descriptions of the material are written to help future researchers decide if the material is relevant to their project. Often the material is digitized so that it can be made available through the Internet.

For example, AIMM has all of the World War II deck logs and patrol reports in digital format on the website. This way, if someone wants to look through the deck logs, they don't have to travel to Washington, DC to the National Archives to read the originals.

Creating digital copies also reduces wear and tear on fragile and rare originals. AIMM has only a few copies of the World War II cruise book.