Tip #13: Learn what’s important.

Written By Dmitri Schmidt

The other week we discussed the importance of knowing the difference between high priority and low priority threats to your collection, but it’s just as important to know what the high priority items in your collection are. In other words, if a disaster occurs, what items do you attempt to rescue first?

Here’s some example questions to help build that discussion*:

- What are the items that are most important to the community?

- What are the items that get used the most?

- What items would be the most difficult to replace?

- What items would be most at risk from X disaster?

- What items are easy to move to a secondary location?

- And which ones can’t be moved at all?

*Bonus tip: the best discussions happen not just between members of your team, but with your community as a whole!

Want to learn more about mitigating damage in your collection? Check out our webinar on YouTube!

Dmitri Schmidt

Dmitri plays a pivotal role in coordinating Backlog’s outreach efforts. They curate our weekly #FridayFinds and #ArchivalTips social media posts, shedding light on items discovered in our genealogy work and providing tips and tricks to approaching problems in the archives.

Dmitri holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and German Studies from Saint Louis University. During their university years, they dedicated over 1000 hours to interning and volunteering at local St. Louis institutions, including the St. Louis Science Center and the St. Louis University Museum of Art. As the Collections Intern at the Science Center, Dmitri assisted in developing and installing the "Into the Vault" exhibit.

Before joining Backlog, Dmitri served as a Fulbright Grantee, teaching English as a second language in former East Germany. From guiding 11th graders in analyzing pop albums as poetry to discussing the significance of the civil rights movement with 8th graders, they covered a broad spectrum of subjects. While reveling in connecting with students and injecting fun into grammar lessons, Dmitri's deep passion for all things archival eventually drew them back home.

Today, Dmitri works as a Herbarium Assistant at the Missouri Botanical Garden, helping digitize the millions of preserved plant specimens. After being scanned and transcribed, these images aid scholars around the globe in furthering botanical research. Dmitri also serves as the archivist for the Kirkwood Historical Society. They are currently overseeing the “Journeys into Kirkwood’s History” project, which aims to digitize documents related to Kirkwood’s early Black settlements.

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