I hope this question falls within the rules - it is about the practice of history!
I'm a trustee of an education charity that has just finished cataloguing its archive, so we've now got this brilliant resource that we'd like academics to study.
I'm not a historian, so I was wondering if anyone here has any advice on the best ways to reach an academic audience and let them know that we've got this great resource they can look at!
(This is our archive if you're interested.)
In grad school, I was fortunate to be a curator on a huge new collection the library received. Loads of fun going thru pallets of stuff and trying to make sense of it.
In order to get the word out, a few of us wrote short articles on a bit of the collection -- think short histories of the organization, a bit on how the org. fit into a larger movement, bios of major players, etc. -- and then submitted them to smaller, niche journals. These articles were serious, but designed to 'show off' parts of the collection.
We also sent emails to various larger journals detailing the collection. Some of these were published, most were ignored.
It was our experience that it doesn't take a lot of 'carpet bombing' to get the word out -- it seemed to spread fairly quickly.
Good luck to you. I know the feeling of finishing a collection. It's overwhelming.