Library and Information Science Commons^™

In Summer 2016, GVSU Libraries was invited to submit a brief article for the Michigan Archival Association's Fall Open Entry newsletter on the background and impact of the Mid-Michigan Digital Practitioner's community. The article provides that background and several details and outcomes of the most recent meetings.

Grand Valley State University (GVSU) is a dynamically growing public liberal arts university located in Allendale, Michigan, United States. In 2012, GVSU Libraries became the recipient of the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. The Libraries prides itself on innovation and taking risks to better serve its faculty and students and to improve its collections.

In step with that mission, beginning in early 2016 the Libraries began making strides to move beyond outsourcing its digital curation and to strengthen capacity and expertise for managing its own open source digital collections technologies.

This immediately involved making dramatic changes to a range …

In late 2016, the Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) at GVSU LIbraries were approached by a faculty member with a request to help retrieve a series of important emails, journals, and film production notes that were stored electronically on two very old (legacy) Macintosh computers. This presentation was used to provide the Mid-Michigan Digital Practitioners community with an overview of the materials and the use case being presented. Attention was drawn to the challenges of connecting and retrieving data from obsolete computer technology and feedback was solicited for strategies and best practices to follow.

The digital curation and technology faculty/staff of GVSU Libraries began 2016 with a number of digital initiatives that engaged the Libraries with faculty and departments across the University. This presentation highlights these initiatives for the Mid-Michigan Digital Practitioners (MMDP) community. Specific initiatives covered include the new Digital Studies Minor, digital humanities projects, efforts to launch an electronic records management program, and many others.