My mentor has been amazing and incredibly supportive through what has turned out to be a very challenging time for both myself and the institution that I work for.
As part of Plugged In, Powered Up, The National Archives has developed a peer mentoring programme to help build relationships between confident digital practitioners and professionals who have limited experience of digital work. Mentors meet their mentees online once or twice a month over six months to support the development of a digital project.
The first cohort of peer mentors and mentees worked together from April to October 2020, followed by a second cohort from January to July 2021 and a third from January to July 2022. The programme’s fourth cohort will collaborate in 2023.
I have had conversations I would not have had the confidence to have before.
Mentees have come from business archives, university archives, charities, museums and local authority archives and have received support with digital engagement activity, preservation and wider digital strategy, digital methods and approaches to digital access. Mentors have come from archives including The National Archives, National Records of Scotland, Cambridge University, Borthwick Institute of Archives, Gloucestershire Archives and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick.
Projects
Projects receiving support from mentors have included:
- Developing a digital strategy and a digital advocacy programme to make the case for investment in preservation capacity
- Researching and implementing software and workflows to improve access to digital materials
- Implementing digital preservation procedures and tools from scratch
- Support for digital engagement and storytelling using collections
Apply to the peer mentoring programme
Applications for the next round of peer mentoring will open towards the end of 2023.
If you are interested in hearing more about the programme and the work of our digital mentees, there is a recording of the Digital Archives Learning Exchange (DALE) from December 2021 on YouTube that focuses on the programme.