Brandon Werts
Archivist | Enthusiastic Organizer
“I’ve never met a collection I didn’t want to process.”
Work at HAI
Brandon joined the team at HAI ready to tackle any project that he could get his hands on. Fresh out of a non-profit, historical society archival setting, he has great experience managing projects and achieving goals with limited resources and countless roadblocks and interruptions. In fact, he rises to the challenge of mounting projects that are entirely new to an organization’s workflow. Brandon’s professional focus is archival processing, procedure development, and training.
While working with HAI, Brandon has had the opportunity to work with a new archival initiative within an established library system. His achievements include helping to introduce archival standards and framework, creating a processing plan, and training staff to complete processing tasks for their inaugural collection. Brandon embraces the opportunity to learn from each project, picking up skills and gaining experience with new technologies whenever possible.
Path to HAI
Brandon is a performer and collector of music. A lifetime of meticulously organizing and arranging his own personal collections has transitioned into a career of organizing and arranging other’s collections. He earned a bachelor’s degree in digital media arts with a focus on audio recording from California State University Dominguez Hills. In 2017 he graduated from San Jose State University with a master’s degree in library and information science with the goal of marrying his audio and information degrees in an audio preservation setting.
School projects led him to a five-year position at the Historical Society of Long Beach. Brandon jumped at the chance to give back to his hometown. He helped research and design gallery exhibitions, provided research assistance to archives patrons, and managed a team of volunteers to complete grant-funded processing projects. The wide variety of lessons learned in his role with the Historical Society of Long Beach led him to HAI, where he hopes to utilize those skills and continue to develop his toolbelt.