Archivist Hats

Archives are one of the few workplaces where the house rules are posted on the door. Reading rooms commonly allow pencils only, because ink cannot be erased, and even pigment archival inks are treated as non-reversible. White gloves are widely called a myth: they cost dexterity and raise the risk of tearing fragile paper, so clean, dry hands are the standard advice. A linear foot is 12 inches of shelf space, and a backlog is material that has been received but not yet processed, which every archivist can quote in feet. The Society of American Archivists counted 5,615 members as of May 2023, a small profession with a very particular vocabulary. These archivist hats run on that vocabulary. Two badges name the job, and the sentence designs carry the shop talk: acid-free everything, box 14 and folder 3, the nothing-is-trash vow, the pencil rule, the clean-hands creed and the letters from 1862 that were never written for the reader. Archivist merchandise is thin, with plain Archivist shirts and an embroidered Ephemera dad hat from the Los Angeles Archivists Collective among the few finds, so these lines are mostly new. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Choose one for your own reading room, or give one to the archivist who confiscates your pen.