Redstart Works, a one-woman archival consultancy, was established on July 25, 2024. I’m excited to celebrate one trip around the sun! Over the last year, I learned and did a lot of things. I’m celebrating the best way an archivist can, by simply recapping what happened.
I’m thinking about my time in terms of paid and unpaid labor these days, so that’s how it’s organized for the recap.
What I did: 💲💲💲
- I helped my favorite archival consultancy, Memory Rising, produce her monthly newsletter. I got to learn about an important part of small business operations while creating fun content with a friend. Eira is doing inspiring and important work to protect archives in the face of climate change. I aim to find more ways of using by business as an outlet to work with my talented and fun friends as I move into year 2. HMU if you’re a friend reading this and you want to work on something together!
- I gave two anti-oppressive facilitation workshops, to members of the Digital Library Federation (virtual) and attendees of the New England Archivists 2025 Spring Meeting (in-person).
- I published Archivist Actions, Abolitionist Futures: Reimagining Archival Practice Against Incarceration with several amazing co-authors. I led this project with my dear friend, SAA Council member, and archivist Alison Clemens. We recruited archivists who worked on projects with people impacted by the US prison system to write about their work. We co-wrote the intro which grapples with how libraries and archives rely on incarcerated laborers to prop up our institutions and our work and how misaligned this is with archival values. The other authors tell of incredible work caring for the records and often the people behind the records of incarceration. Alison and I had many more submissions than we could accommodate for this publication, so there’s a lot more to say and a lot more work to share. I hope I can cut a path to continue working in this area in the future.
- I managed community review, editing, and publishing for a collaboratively written digital archives knowledge share, Good Practices for Acquiring Email Archives. Then I wrote a guidebook for how to do this kind of collaborative community academic publishing as part of the 2024 Library Futures Research Cohort. Thanks to the co-authors of Good Practices… who reviewed and provided feedback on my guidebook 🤝
- The Library Futures research cohort is currently open for submissions: Apply by August 15, 2025.
- The guidebook is still a work in progress, but I’m so close to wrapping it up so I think it will be published this year.
- I helped design the project plan for a digital curation education grant application to the NEH, but it wasn’t funded.
- I participated in a couple of workshops as a subject matter expert: Washington University’s Born-Digital Poetry Project and University at Albany’s ArcLight Integration Project.
- I helped a group of old school hackers and net artists develop requirements and plans to start a hacktivist archive. I hope we come together to move the project forward at some point, because we had a lot of fun ideas.
- I helped an R1 university define requirements for digitized and born-digital special collections in a digital asset management system (DAMS). Then I tested a system against their requirements. I love advocating for archives functionality in enterprise systems.
- I helped a professional association migrate their association management system (AMS) and website to a new AMS. This project allowed me to do both data cleanup / migration prep and planning, and develop some training videos and documentation for the new system. More of my favorite things!
- I provided a preservation assessment for a public library’s archival collections - or at least, I’ve done the site visit, and I’m working on the report. I couldn’t have predicted how energizing it was to work outside of an archive on archives. The staff of this library was doing such great work for their community. I would love to do more preservation assessments for organizations that find themselves holding archives that they care about, but do not have an overall mission that focuses on preservation.
- I reviewed a monograph manuscript for an author writing about archives in New Orleans. It was so nice getting to know the author, and I’m excited about her work. I’ll share more when it’s published!
- I started working with a professional association to redesign a piece of their digital archives curriculum. The work is ongoing.
I also worked for a catering company about twice a week as waitstaff 🍽️
This is my “unpaid work” list:
- Chaired the Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Public Policy
- Chaired the New England Archivists’ Financial Planning Committee
- Served on the Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board
- Presented at the New England Archivists 2025 Spring Meeting on the environmental effects of AI, and at Humanities Advocacy Day on the importance of funding NARA.
- I served on a municipal board
- Presented a workshop at the joint 2025 annual business meeting of SAA CoPP/CoPA/RAAC/I&A on how to talk to legislators about archives
- Worked on getting a co-sponsor to introduce the Public Archives Resiliency Act (still looking - contact me if you want to help!)
- I interviewed for 4 full time jobs and responded to 7 RFPs that didn’t pan out.
Building the business
- I got a logo! Thank you to Kit Collins for creating it for me!
- I built a prototype website using Amanda Visconti’s helpful guide to setting up a jekyll site and hosting it on github pages
- Very recently, I began investing further in my website. I talked Phil from Tiger Pajamas into teaching me how to build a website, and he in turn talked me into learning Astro. 😈 It’s been so fun: I always look forward to working on my website (I guess I quickly forget how dejected I felt when I last stepped away unsure how I’d broken it this time). Phil is very helpful, professional, and patient with me. I hope to publish a new website by the end of the summer.
- I printed some business cards, and I attended two conferences, the New England Archivists Spring Meeting, and the Best Practices Exchange. Both were fantastic and unfortunately for our larger professional associations, I am now part of the archives sector that has decided to attend only regional and small conferences into the foreseeable future.
It was good to make this list, because I mostly felt like I didn’t do anything to build my business for my first year. I didn’t design or execute any intentional marketing plans. I am a naturally outgoing person who doesn’t have a problem pitching myself to people, so maybe I did some marketing through conference conversations and whatnot, but it was always organic and never super intentional. I mostly have prayed that my work will speak for itself and that word of mouth will get me more work.
But the worst part about my lack of marketing routine is that I didn’t feel like I had time or capacity to share about what I’ve been up to, and there are some cool things in this list I wish I had shared earlier and with more reflection! I hope to change that in my second year.
What helped me get through the first year
- Working on my own can be isolating, so I have 6 regular one-on-ones with friends, comrades, and mentors to keep me grounded. Some are monthly and others are every two months. These check-ins help me stay sane and moving!! Talking to other people dislodges blockers in my work and inspires me to keep going, especially when I’m tired. Thank you to my people!!!!
- Eira at Memory Rising and Frances at Myriad Consulting were especially helpful getting the business going this first year. Thank you for helping other consultants enter this space!!
- The wonderful Off the Grid podcast inspires me to build my business into what I really want it to be, while calming me down about the whole thing. I even joined a coworking space hosted by Amelia and I love it.
- My therapist. Seems obvious, but we wouldn’t want to make anyone’s labor invisible, now would we.
- In the first couple months of the business, I hired a job coach to help me through the transition and try to figure out how to scope my business with my many interests. She was great and I would recommend her to anyone who needs a job coach, but it wasn’t a great business decision for me due to the expense. I think I learned that the best time to engage a coach is when you are pivoting your business or growing it or shrinking it, not when you are just starting out with the basics. And a job coach can’t tell you what your business should be: you have to figure that out. I never really figured out how to scope the business, because I like to do a lot of things and I’m happy for people to pay me to do any of them. Somewhere along the way I learned to stop worrying about scoping the business, keep working and getting clients, and see what naturally falls into place as the scope that I want and my clients need.
- The SCORE program matched me with a great mentor who helped me understand basic business administration.
What I learned
Here’s a few things I learned about myself and what it is like to run a business in year 1.
- I had more than enough knowledge of the subject to start my business. When people come to consultants for help with archives, they are often starting with the basics. Working in academic institutions and steeped in academic communities for many years, sometimes at large institutions with plenty of resources, I lost track of what basic knowledge about archives looks like. I didn’t realize how deep my knowledge had gotten and how many assumptions I was making about what other people, including other librarians and cultural memory workers, know about archives. Not only do I not need the deeper technical knowledge to run a business, it’s not helpful for most of my clients. My digital archives knowledge isn’t widely understood throughout the profession and basic training and best practices still need to be communicated over and over. At first this realization was tough, because doing more technical work was a major reason I wanted to start this consultancy in the first place - I love tinkering with a difficult problem. But then I came to realize this is great for my business, because I can scratch the surface of my knowledge with some of my offerings to start, and dig deeper and share more as the business grows. Then I got to work with some “just getting started” archives projects and I learned that in practice, helping people just getting started with basic information gives me so much energy. This idea I had of myself becoming more of an technical expert getting to dive deeper into technical issues may just not match reality, or what the world needs from me. We’ll see which of these desires I follow the most in year 2!
- When I write and read things on paper, it feels better. I’m starting to wonder if there is a finite amount of screen time we’re all born with, and I exhausted mine playing Everquest 12 hours a day 7 days a week every summer break in the early 2000s. (Although to be clear, adult Jess also uses up her daily screen quota with news doomscrolling as soon as her eyes open in the AM). After 15 years of relying on computers to perform most of my editing and academic reading, I broke. I’m starting to use paper again to write down initial thoughts, draw out structures or outlines, and make text editing decisions. I think part of the reason I forgot how to do work with pen and paper is that I believed doing something on paper and then doing it again on the computer was inefficient and duplicative. Now I realize it’s not, my brain is working differently when in these different modes, and also, i don’t care how efficient I am. You know those things you look back on and cringe? Mine is definitely my obsession with efficiency. Nearly-40 year old Jess no longer gives a fuck about what is fastest or best way of doing things and just wants to end up with a good work product that I enjoyed making and that clients are happy with. Anyway, looking ahead, I hope to rediscover more ways of getting off my computer and working on paper while touching grass in my backyard!
Looking ahead 🌈
I’m open to more work right now, so reach out if you think I might be able to help you.
I’m co-presenting at a Society of California Archivists workshop on August 21 “Promoting Archival Work Through Advocacy and Outreach.” The topic is strategies and tactics for advocating for archives. Join me!
I’m also helping a small nonprofit with a records management project, wrapping up the aforementioned publication on community academic publishing, and working with a professional association to redesign part of their digital archives curriculum.
Looking ahead, I am continuing to scale back on my unpaid work list. I have finished many of the commitments on that list, and I am taking a break from SAA starting this fall. The one thing I am unwilling to let go is cosponsorship of PARA - I’ll continue banging that drum!
Please contact me to chat about your project in a free consultation or to (re)connect on shared interests. I’m looking forward to a fun year 2!