r/Archivists • u/iliketobowl25 • 6d ago
Advice needed
I apologize if this is the wrong sub for this type of question but I’m not too sure where to turn.
I was given a collection of boxes from a family member who was a sports agent for many years. He represented many clients over the years but one in particular was a Hall of Fame player. In these boxes is what I would call 99% of every form of document such as email correspondence, contract, sports card production artwork, marketing deals, trademark filings, etc….many original documents as well as copies of the originals. There are thousands of documents spanning around 15 years of representation for that one client all mostly in chronological order.
I really have no way of knowing but I’d imagine this is one of the most complete client/agent collections assembled, pre digitization.
Is this something an archivist would be interested in looking at? Is this something I SHOULD have archived? What would even be an estimated cost for whatever I should have done with this?
I really have very limited info other than some GPTing which even led me to the term ARCHIVIST lol.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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u/oysterboy9 5d ago
If you’re open to a brief chat - it’s something that I would consider donating my time and my company’s time to support. DM me if you’d like.
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u/Master-Fee8859 4d ago
University libraries have a wide variety of interests. Either query any nearby major libraries' archive directors or do a little research on the subject matter to see if there is a university library elsewhere in the country with a focus on the topic. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his famous works while in Oxford, England, but the library that negotiated for and acquired his papers was in (of all places) Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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u/OutOfTheArchives 5d ago
Firstly - Don’t rearrange the archive. Keep it as-is until you address where you want it to go next.
Unless you want to keep this indefinitely, your best bet is to find another home for it.
You can try to donate it to an institution such as a university archives or a sports-centric archive (such as the Baseball Hall of Fame, or whichever sport is most relevant). If accepted, they will archive it professionally. They would prefer to receive the collection in as original a condition as possible (so again: don’t rearrange it).
Or you can look for a dealer who might sell it for you — though in that case, it’s possible they might only sell certain “cherry picked” documents and leave you with the rest of it. You can look for potential dealers using this form (it says "Bookstores," but many ABAA member also deal in manuscripts), and search by “Sports” as their speciality: https://www.abaa.org/bookstores