2023 Virginia Archives Month

This year's theme is: Community Made: Zines and Self-Published Materials
Truth be told, all archival work is a little DIY. While there are professional standards and best practices, at the end of the day, a lot of our day-to-day work is, well, homespun. Similarly, many users of archival collections come up with creative and innovative ways to utilize collections or share their research. To highlight the power and opportunity in the DIY efforts of both archivists and archives users, this year’s Virginia Archives Month theme is Community Made: Zines and Self-Published Material.

This year, our Flickr album highlights collection materials that lend themselves to creative use, so go wild and make a zine on woodblock printing techniques or beekeeping or put out that neighborhood newsletter with a little extra flair! This year, there will also be a Virginia Archives Month zine covering the basics of archives - sort of an Archives 101 - to help spread the good news about the importance of archives and special collections.