Soliciting Feedback from the Community

Owned by Valerie Addonizio
Last updated: May 13, 2024 by Suzanne Reller
3 min read

This page summarizes resources, opportunities, and general advice on engaging with other community members about initiatives taking place within Councils for which community feedback would be either desired or required.

One trap community members tend to fall into is to find reasons they can’t or shouldn’t post to the communication channels in and around the ASpace Community. Resist that trap! Engage with the community! Use the communication channels you have! The ultimate responsibility to reach out and engage the community rests with YOU, and you do not need permission to engage with the AS Community for Council work. So the biggest takeaway from this page should be empowerment to engage and the freedom to do so.

Reasons for Community Feedback

Imagine that your sub-team is tasked with something for which you would like community feedback or visibility. This could be:

  • A desire to know the community’s priorities

  • Feedback on a new feature or desired behavior

  • A survey to collect information about needs/wants or current implementations

  • Wanting to recruit for an ad hoc team

  • Hosting a special discussion on a particular topic

  • Simple outreach to educate about your team, its charter, or its impacts

  • An announcement related to your team’s work, such as the publication of a new policy or a new resource

Determine Your Approach

The best way to start is to work with your sub-team to discuss what you’d like to get back. Would a survey be appropriate? Would you prefer a discussion? Are you just looking to make an announcement? Is there a particular message you’d like to draft? If you are hesitant about the best way to proceed, work together as a sub-team to define your best case scenario and draft any language that you want to share. If you are hesitant about the best approach, reach out to your Council Chair or Vice Chair (usually the person sending you big meeting invites), they are happy to help!

Avenues of Communication

Before seeking new avenues of communication, ask what avenues you are already aware of and participate in. Communication about ArchivesSpace and its initiatives does not need to be strictly limited to the avenues of communication managed by ArchivesSpace; instead, the Program Team and Council leadership encourage communication across any and all networks. Simply put, if you are already member of any communication networks (listservs, Slack workspaces, Reddit, Discord, Mastodon, Twitter, blogs, alumni networks) related to archives and archival concerns, start there! Your experience as an individual in the archival community may open additional doors just by bringing your networks into the picture.

When thinking of communication in the ArchivesSpace community specifically, you may already know about the Mailing Lists. If you are an ArchivesSpace member that is not already subscribed to the Users Group list, please consider it ASAP! This is the most trafficked and popular avenue of communication for ArchivesSpace. Please see the link above for details on joining it and the non-member Google Group. These avenues of communication are 100% appropriate for communicating about Council and sub-team work. Just include a little context about who you are and perhaps a few links back to your sub-team’s wiki pages, but please do not hesitate to engage the community via these methods.

The Program Team also manages the ArchivesSpace blog and Twitter feed, as well as the more purpose-specific listservs such as the Member Representatives list. The Program Team may be willing to post to these avenues depending on the need, though they do encourage users to start with their own networks. Please reach out to the Community Engagement Coordinator to discuss these options. They are there to help!

Finally, why stick to text blasts? If you would like to engage the community via the forums (the Annual Online Forum or Member Forum) or host a topic-specific Zoom, please don’t hesitate to consider live/virtual real-time options! While not all topics are suitable for those atmospheres, if your topic is a good fit and you are willing, then engaging live can be super rewarding and net you tangible results! Sub-teams presented at previous Online Forums with great success. Again, please reach out to the Community Engagement Coordinator to discuss these options. They are there to help!