Archival Science Commons^™

Opening Cuny: Academic Works At Work, Megan Wacha, Miriam Deutch, William A. Casari, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Academic Works, CUNY’s new open access institutional repository, collects and provides public access to the scholarly and creative works produced by CUNY faculty, students and staff. This program will show how opening content to the world impacts CUNY, as each speaker addresses collections at their institution: dissertations at The Graduate Center, Open Educational Resources at Brooklyn College, the “Save Hostos” archival collection at Hostos Community College and faculty research from across CUNY.

Sea Change: A Community Approach To Archives Internships, Rebecca Goldman Mslis

Professional presentations

This marine-themed talk provides recommendations for archivists to improve internships in their local community.

What's New In Preservation At Musselman Library: Student Workers And The Beauty Of The Book, Carolyn Sautter, Mary Wootton

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Musselman Library's Special Collections and College Archives at Gettysburg College involves student workers and interns in our preservation and conservation efforts. The recent addition to the staff of a half-time conservator position has opened up new avenues for training. This has also resulted in additional access points for our students, faculty and other researchers to interact with our collections. This presentation discusses our preservation activities and our new digital collection The Beauty of the Book. It also illustrates how we have engaged student workers in conservation and enhanced cataloging description projects giving them a deeper appreciation for and understanding …

Meaning In The Spaces: Archivists' Impact On The Historical Record, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

Archives and “the archives” are culturally-specific places and materials. In the same way, both individual archivists and users of archives are situated in specific, often different, contexts of culture and identity. Archives are also spaces where researchers encounter sources for creating history. Thus, as both archival professionals and users of archival material, the meanings we construct for ourselves through understanding our past can be thought of as being constantly generated in the ever-changing spaces within and across archival sources, where individual donors, archivists, and researchers, archival professional standards, daily practical needs, and repositories’ organizational missions interact and interrelate. Because each …

What’S Your Source?: The Dilemma Of Scanning Negatives Vs. Prints To Represent Images In Photography Collections, Kevin Miller

Kevin C. Miller

Recently, Pepperdine University Libraries initiated the digitization and curatorial arrangement of a large collection of negatives and prints donated by the widow of Hanson A. Williams, Jr., one of our alumni. Williams had been a photographer by trade and, after his death, his wife donated 13.86 linear feet of photographic images depicting his life at college and immediately afterwards in the Korean War. After processing the collection, we realized that we had a copious number of Williams’ original negatives in addition to multiple iterations (in some cases) of prints that he had made from these negatives. As we discussed a …

Nsuworks Annual Report 2014-2015, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In 2014 Nova Southeastern University celebrated its 50th. In conjunction with the anniversary, the NSU Libraries determined a need to preserve the past, present and future of the university by creating a campus wide repository for all scholarship, creative work, and historical materials produced by the university. NSUWorks is a part of the NSU Libraries’ contribution to the university’s ongoing growth and success as an internationally recognized research institution. NSUWorks was launched at the Dean’s Meeting on November 2014, and reached its one year anniversary at the end of February 2015. The NSUWorks Annual Report covers the period of February …

The Role Of National Archives In The Creation Of National Master Narratives In Southeast Asia, Michael Karabinos

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper is a working paper for a research project in its initial stage. Using an article by German historian Stefan Berger on the role of national archives in the creation of master historical narratives in Europe as its inspiration, I look at the same concept for postcolonial Southeast Asia. Particular attention is paid to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Due to the colonial past of these countries, what is held in their national archives includes many records created by the former colonial administrations. How this affects the creation of master historical narratives will be addressed in this research project. I …

Archival Exhibits As Interdisciplinary Teaching Tools: A Case Study, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

This case study describes a recent exhibit of archival photographs at the University of Dayton and how it was used as a teaching tool in an undergraduate course. The exhibit, Faith, Reason, and One-Hour Processing, showcased archival photographs from the Marian Library, a special library on campus devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This article outlines how the project was developed in conjunction with a campus-wide theme, Faith and Reason, and used as a teaching tool in an interdisciplinary undergraduate course, Development of Western Culture in a Global Context (ASI 120). This article also suggests the interdisciplinary potential of Catholic …

What’S Your Source?: The Dilemma Of Scanning Negatives Vs. Prints To Represent Images In Photography Collections, Kevin C. Miller

Pepperdine University Libraries

Recently, Pepperdine University Libraries initiated the digitization and curatorial arrangement of a large collection of negatives and prints donated by the widow of Hanson A. Williams, Jr., one of our alumni. Williams had been a photographer by trade and, after his death, his wife donated 13.86 linear feet of photographic images depicting his life at college and immediately afterwards in the Korean War. After processing the collection, we realized that we had a copious number of Williams’ original negatives in addition to multiple iterations (in some cases) of prints that he had made from these negatives. As we discussed a …

Developing Collecting Areas Through Digital Surrogate Donations: Are The Benefits Worth The Risks?, Kevin C. Miller

Kevin C. Miller

Special collections librarians at small or medium sized institutions may lack the resources required to build new collecting areas or further enrich the collecting areas mandated by their mission. As one measure to overcome this challenge at Pepperdine University, we are experimenting with an approach that we call “digital surrogate” donations. In these cases, we work with donors to create digital surrogates—typically scans of images or texts—of select physical materials with which donors are not quite ready to part. Per a modified donor agreement, the digital surrogate collections are then made available to researchers through our digital archive and open …

Open Access To Archival Collections, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Text of a short presentation on crowdfunding open access to archival collections. The presentation was one of five "Brief Topic Talks" at the Boston-Area Open Access Advocacy Meetup, which took place on July 14, 2015 at Snell Library, Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

Also included as supplementary files are the meeting agenda, the text of the presentation in Word, and an outline version of the presentation / speaking notes.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bits: Archival Motivation In The Digital Age, Heather Ryan, Jane Nelson

Library and Information Science: Student Scholarship

Why do people become archivists? Historically (and anecdotally) it was a deep love of musty, old records that drew people to the profession. While there have been many other motivating forces that inspired would-be archivists, it is most often that one hears of people seeking jobs in archives for love of “the stuff,” as evidenced in Kate Thiemer’s blog post, Honest tips for wannabe archivists (2012).

As a result of the continually advancing presence of digitized and born digital archival collections, the physical nature of archival “stuff” is changing. While there remains the physical imprint of digital information on floppy …

Strategic Planning And Collaborative Effort To Preserve The University’S History, Xiaohua (Cindy) Li

Librarian Publications

Since established in 1963, Sacred Heart University has accumulated tens of thousands of photographs that have recorded the significant moments or important occasions in the university’s history. Over the years, more and more photos have been taken but the effort to preserve the valuable information has not been up to the pace of the photo accumulation. Realizing some photos started to deteriorate due to the physical space in which these images were stored and the university was about to lose the visual data, the Office of University Advancement (OUA) began to seek a long-term solution that would help them manage …

Developing Collecting Areas Through Digital Surrogate Donations: Are The Benefits Worth The Risks?, Kevin C. Miller

Pepperdine University Libraries

Special collections librarians at small or medium sized institutions may lack the resources required to build new collecting areas or further enrich the collecting areas mandated by their mission. As one measure to overcome this challenge at Pepperdine University, we are experimenting with an approach that we call “digital surrogate” donations. In these cases, we work with donors to create digital surrogates—typically scans of images or texts—of select physical materials with which donors are not quite ready to part. Per a modified donor agreement, the digital surrogate collections are then made available to researchers through our digital archive and open …

Developing Collecting Areas Through Digital Surrogate Donations: Are The Benefits Worth The Risks?, Kevin C. Miller

Kevin C. Miller

Special collections librarians at small or medium sized institutions may lack the resources required to build new collecting areas or further enrich the collecting areas mandated by their mission. As one measure to overcome this challenge at Pepperdine University, we are experimenting with an approach that we call “digital surrogate” donations. In these cases, we work with donors to create digital surrogates—typically scans of images or texts—of select physical materials with which donors are not quite ready to part. Per a modified donor agreement, the digital surrogate collections are then made available to researchers through our digital archive and open …

History In The Making: Creating The Shenandoah Living Archive, Lynn Eaton, Kate Morris

Kate Morris

Navigating Reference Requests: An Examination Of Academic Archivists' Use Of Reference Tools, Anne Daniel, Amanda Jamieson, Amanda Oliver

Anne Daniel

“Save Our History!” Collaborating To Preserve The Past At Umass Boston, Meghan Bailey, Patricia Bruttomesso, Andrew Elder, Carolyn M. Goldstein, Jessica R. Holden, Joanne Riley

Joseph P. Healey Library Publications

Sparked by the 50th anniversary of the founding of the University of Massachusetts Boston in June 1964, University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) staff in the Joseph P. Healey Library collaborated with departments across campus to carry out a wide range of initiatives, all focused on locating, accessioning, preserving, and sharing the physical evidence of the university’s history. This poster outlines the various collecting activities, outreach methods, digitization projects, and dogged detective work that resulted in the addition of more than 2,500 linear feet of unique historic materials to the University Archives, as well as a number of well-received public …

New Perspectives On Internship And Practicum Requirements In Archival Education, April K. Anderson-Zorn

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This conference panel discussed internship and practicum work in archival repositories. The presentation delivered by Anderson focused on training at institutional repositories and the program she developed for both ISU and regional students. As per the panel’s abstract: ”This session will generate new perspectives on the issue of internships and practicums with the intended goal of balancing the educational needs of students, the instructional requirements of archival educators, and the ethical concerns of institutions.”

Assessing The Strategic Credibility Of Special Collections And Archives Departments, Rick A. Stoddart, Erin L. Passehl-Stoddart

Rick A Stoddart

Match That Photo! Embracing Analog Methods To Enhance Digital Collections, Erin Passehl-Stoddart

Erin Passehl Stoddart

When creating digital collections, different methods and workflows may be considered depending on the size, amount of metadata, and who will be staffing parts of the digitization process. Feeling overwhelmed with 500+ photographs with minimal metadata, I employed an analog tactic: playing a card matching game with printed photographs. Through matching, metadata was enhanced and locations identified more efficiently than staring at a computer screen. The collection was recently published online and has received local and statewide attention, in part due to its enhanced metadata and researched storyline. This poster will present alternative ways to employ visual literacy tactics to …

Assessing The Strategic Credibility Of Special Collections And Archives Departments, Erin Passehl-Stoddart, Rick Stoddart

Erin Passehl Stoddart

No abstract provided.

More Than Just Potatoes: Highlights From The #11;University Of Idaho, Erin Passehl-Stoddart

Erin Passehl Stoddart

This session gathers archivists from throughout the Gem State--from both academic settings and historical societies--to share the variety and richness of our heritage represented by our archival resources. Panelists have selected favorite collections from their respective institutions that highlight Idaho's distinctive--and often surprising--history. Presentations will include recent innovative projects that are making our collections accessible to audiences beyond our borders for the first time. What does "the Musical Poem Recorder of Cascade, Idaho" have to do with Oregon and California? Ever wondered about America's first "mail order religion" and where it all started? The session ultimately spotlights the connections our …

Last Post, Abby M. Rolland

Blogging the Library

I cannot believe this is my last week working in Special Collections and there are less than three weeks until graduation. My time up here has gone by so fast and I’m sad it’s coming to an end! I’ve made a lot of progress and learned a lot as well. [excerpt]

Re-Housing Slides In Special Collections, Abby M. Rolland

Blogging the Library

So as I mentioned two weeks, I re-housed a lot of old slides. I’ve added some pictures, to show the wear that old slide covers get and how slides need to be housed in specific, archival sheets. I got through all of the slides in the back. Then, Amy (archivist) and I went to look at some of the slides in this other area and we found at that there are lots of slides in nice, healthy slide covers, but they’re all completely out of order. There are slides from 1986 in the same sheet as slides from the early …

So Many Projects, So Little Time, Melanie L. Fernandes

Blogging the Library

Recently I’ve been going back and forth between a few different projects. I’ve been working hard trying to identify people in the digital photos from past Gettysburg College theatre productions in the GettDigital Theatre Arts collection. The staff taught me how to use the ContentDM program so that I can actually have the website show the names I’ve uncovered. I’ve been using yearbooks, alumni catalogs, and some of the staff from the Theatre Arts Department as resources. At the beginning I was making a lot of headway with identifying people; however, things are going a bit slower now and the …

Selecting My Senior Star Book!, Abby M. Rolland

Blogging the Library

In the past two weeks, I’ve been working on the Whiting journal and re-housing the PR collection slides. I’m editing Kate Whiting’s travel journal, which is coming along nicely! I would’ve loved to meet her and talked to her about her adventures, including but not limited to why she and her family picked the boat and places they did and if they ever took any other trips. I’ve re-housed a lot of PR slides and they look way better in the new covers. The old covers get sticky and start to smell funky when they get old. I’ll post some …

Travel And Publicity, Abby M. Rolland

Blogging the Library

So in the past couple weeks (interrupted by Spring Break), I spent time cross-checking the PR files with the Finding Aid for them in Word, which some of the interns last summer compiled. It’s incredibly detailed and I only made a few additions – they did a really good job! Since then, I’ve been reading and researching a travel journal written in 1898 by Kate Burr Draper Whiting. I just finished reading and taking notes on it today and it’s incredibly fascinating. Whiting, around 60 years old at the time, took a two and a half month long “cruise” with …

Review Of Extensible Processing For Archives And Special Collections: Reducing Processing Backlogs, Todd Welch

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Extensible Processing for Archives and Special Collections: Reducing Processing Backlogs.

Keeping Busy!, Melanie L. Fernandes

Blogging the Library

I have been keeping very busy in Special Collections! I just finished a project combing some papers that had initially been separated. One box was intended to be department papers, while the other was supposed to be personal papers. I talked with some of the staff and we decided that it would be best to combine the papers, as they have a lot of common information that would be good to have in one place. That collection is finally complete and it feels great to have my first full project all done! [excerpt]