I think an advisory board can be a great help if you need outside
pressure and support in terms of politics in your organization.    One
difficulty of an advisory 
board is that you must often plan what you want them to do, to know, or
how they
operate with your situation.    Our campus has a faculty committee
titled the
"Library Committee" and some years it has met monthly and others perhaps
twice in the year.    When we've had to "force" faculty to cut serials
(or we would!)
we've used this committee as a conduit to the faculty to help explain
our problem
between limited budgets, rising subscription prices, and need to weed
out serials
no longer pertinent to a curriculum.    We did have a period where the
Library
Director was chairing the committee in order to control it, and came
under campus
ire in that faculty "advisory" committees could not be chaired by the
officials of
the agency they were "advising."   So that can be a problem.   Could an
archives
advisory committee change your policies, collections, acquisitions
policies, etc.?
Do you want that?   Or do want a team of supporters who go out and make
contacts
and spread the word about your agency and services?

Dean

Dean DeBolt
University Librarian, Special Collections
John C. Pace Library, University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
850-474-2213
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