Care Beyond the Collections · Companion Tool

Workload Visibility
& Labor Log

A weekly self-assessment for archivists to name, track, and document the invisible work — emotional labor, ethical decisions, and deferred work — that shapes our practice but rarely appears in any record.
Week of
Emotional Labor The care work inside the work
Reference interactions
requiring emotional holding
Donor / community
contacts managed
Hours with difficult
or traumatic records
Student / colleague
support conversations
Emotional load this week
—
Reflection prompt (optional)

What did you hold for someone else this week that you haven't set down yet?

Ethical Decisions Appraisal, description, accountability
Appraisal decisions
made
Description choices
with ethical weight
Consequential decisions
made without consult
Weight of decisions this week
—
Reflection prompt (optional)

Is there a decision from this week you're still thinking about? What does that mean?

Deferred Work What didn't get done, and why
Constraint pressure this week
—
Reflection prompt (optional)

If this deferred work had a name — a collection, a person, a community — what would you want your institution to know?

Your log 0 entries

No entries yet.

Fill in a week above and click "Log this week" to begin.
How to use this log Complete the three sections each week — the tallies take under 5 minutes. The reflection prompts are optional, for weeks when you need to say more. Over time, your log becomes documentation: a record of what your institution asked of you and what it cost. You can share it with a supervisor, use it to update your position description, or keep it entirely for yourself. This work is real. It deserves a record.

From Care Beyond the Collections: Archivists and Wellness in Uncertain Times · Society of Indiana Archivists