Archival Science Commons^™

Crawling Is More Fun With Friends: Active University Web Archiving Through Cross-Campus Collaboration, Ruth E. Bryan, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Presentations

Between 2023-2024, staff of the University Archives at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center (Lexington, Kentucky, United States) reviewed the sustainability of our web archiving program. Preserving our institution’s vast web presence is technologically demanding, requires ongoing specialized expertise, and is underfunded. It is also absolutely necessary: If university archives do not determine how to sustainably acquire, preserve, and provide access to online documents, we will suffer (and already have experienced) significant gaps in our understanding of the university’s actions, events, and decisions. We used Kristin R. Eschenfelder, et al.’s “nine dimensional framework for digital cultural heritage …

Sisyphus And The Digital Library: Keep Rolling That Boulder Up The Hill (Careful, It's Heavy), Ruth E. Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Megan M. Mummey

Library Presentations

Oftentimes, archivists and programmers feel like Sisyphus of Greek myth, continually rolling our boulder, the digital library, up the hill of stakeholder expectations. Since 1998, the University of Kentucky Libraries has provided online access to digital and digitized archival content through ExploreUK.uky.edu and other sites. Like many other institutions, UK Libraries has faced technological, organizational, and communication challenges in this endeavor. This presentation explores how UK Libraries responded to these challenges by expanding the decision-making team, after years of unclear responsibility and ownership, to reinvigorate internal interest and investment in the local digital library system and workflows.

You Are Here: Defining Our Hidden Born-Digital Backlog, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Presentations

The digital archivist position was created at the University of Kentucky two years ago to help create and refine workflows and process born-digital collections in our manuscripts and university archives collections. While much of the initial work of these last two years was on newly acquired collections and materials, in the decades prior, a variety of born-digital materials on physical media had been gathered in hybrid collections and stored and described in myriad ways. This presentation will demonstrate my processes for discovering and assessing unmigrated born-digital materials on physical media hidden throughout our collection. The process is built on documentation …

Open Access And Citation Impact: Modality, Funding, Publisher, And Disciplinary Trends At The University Of Kentucky, Ben Rawlins, Mitchell Scott

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

As publishers and libraries attempt to align business models and collection strategies to an ever-increasing open access (OA) publishing landscape, both have found that the message of open access citation advantage (OACA) resonates with current and prospective authors. Despite its widespread promotion and acceptance, however, OACA is not universal and is subject to ongoing debate. This quantitative study contributes to the OACA debate and research with a longitudinal focus on citation data from journal articles published 2018-2021 by University of Kentucky affiliated authors. The article and citation data for University of Kentucky affiliated authors are supplemented with University of Kentucky …

Three Lesser-Known African American Poets, Authors, And A Publisher In Kentucky, Reinette F. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

This article highlights the work of some lesser known historical poets who were African American, including Frances Carter DeBerry, Lawrence Harris, Sr., and Phil H. Brown.

The Tiny Library And The Mini Library, Reinette F. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Ask a librarian to describe a tiny library and a general answer will be a facility that is smaller than a small library. A more contem-porary description is a little library in a small wooden box that is attached to a stand and placed in a neighborhood to support reading and free book exchange. Both are good answers and added to these definitions is the centuries-old backstory when the tiny library was whatever an individual meant for it to be.

Storage Media Prioritisation With Technical And Archival Appraisal, Andrew Mcdonnell, Megan M. Mummey

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

This spreadsheet tool is designed to provide archives and libraries a means of prioritizing the order in which data is migrated from physical media carriers and other sources in their collection in need of preservation. It is an adaptation of work from the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Glasgow, who developed a methodology for prioritizing archival processing of digital collections stored in physical storage media.

The original tool (downloadable here: https://researchdata.gla.ac.uk/1634/ ) permits users to calculate a priority score by weighting the following factors: the DPC BitList Endangered Digital Media score, the age of the media, its …

Working Together, Making It Better, Reinette F. Jones, Kopana Terry, Taylor Leigh

Library Presentations

Communication and collaboration, answering questions, and accomplishing goals related to the history of Spanish-speaking people in Kentucky.

Preserving Student Life: Uk Libraries' Experience With "Wildcat Histories", Ruth E. Bryan, Taylor C. Leigh

Library Presentations

The University of Kentucky University Libraries University Archivist and the Modern and Classical Languages Librarian share their experiences, successes, and challenges with preserving student life and partnering with the University of Kentucky Latino Student Union through their six-year "Wildcat Histories" project. Topics include website and social media preservation and description, managing a small grant from Project STAND, and outreach to student organizations. Speaker notes are available upon request.

Looking Back: The Colored Reading Rooms In Kentucky Before 1900: Let Me Free!, Reinette F. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Measuring Uk Libraries User Satisfaction: Ukl Libqual+ 2024 Results, Julene L. Jones

Library Presentations

Presentation based on the University of Kentucky's 2024 LibQUAL+ implementation

University Of Kentucky Libraries' Libqual+ Report 2024, Julene L. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Report of University of Kentucky's 2024 LibQUAL+ results

This Be The Beloved Curse: Learning To Love Ever-Evolving Born-Digital Description, Ruth E. Bryan, Megan M. Mummey, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Presentations

The title of the presentation, “This be the beloved curse” is taken from Philip Larkin’s poem “This be the curse.” In it, Larkin describes the cycle of life where children are messed up by their parents, who, with the best intentions, “...fill you with the faults they had/and add some extra, just for you.” He goes on to explain, though, that our parents, in their turn, were equally messed up “...by fools in old-style hats and coats…”, handing on what Larkin terms “misery” from one generation to another.

As archivists, and especially as archivists working with digital formats, our “beloved …

Active And Retroactive Digital Newspaper Preservation, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

The University of Kentucky Libraries’ (UKL) long-running efforts to document and provide access to the state’s history via newspaper preservation have necessarily evolved over the last 80 years. As news formats and preservation technologies have changed, particularly in relation to born-digital media, the libraries’ efforts have had to keep pace. The race to preserve these materials before they disappear or are locked away on media inaccessible to modern computers is not always chronologically linear, though. Digital archivists and librarians must sometimes straddle multiple generations of technology to successfully migrate, capture, and otherwise preserve digital publications, and there is no single …

Active And Retroactive Digital Newspaper Preservation, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Presentations

This presentation was given at the 2024 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions News Media Conference in Aarhus, Denmark on May 31, 2024. It illustrates a brief glimpse of the University of Kentucky's Digital Newspaper Preservation program, highlighting challenges presented by two new born-digital additions to the collection.

Processing Priorities, Researcher Use, And Programmatic Improvement, Megan M. Mummey

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.

Using Description To Unify School Of Music Recordings And Programs, Treshani Perera, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

Acknowledging that existing collection management practices and policies are no longer adequate takes courage. Acting on this takes time and patience. This can be especially true when tradition and inertia maintain a status quo that does not serve the interests of the collections or users. The presenters discuss their approach to unifying University of Kentucky School of Music concert recordings and programs housed in the University Archives and the Fine Arts Library. They will cover collection acquisition and description decisions, including their decision to create an archival collection guide in ArchivesSpace and a collection-level MARC record providing two access pathways …

Building A Roadmap For Web Archiving: Organizational Sustainability In An American Research University Library, Ruth E. Bryan, Emily B. Collier

Library Presentations

The presenters, archivists in an academic university Library, launched a web archiving program for a public university in the United States in 2018 with a three-year Archive-it contract. In the first six years of the web archiving program, we have laid the groundwork for an ongoing web archiving program through robust documentation built in anticipation of potential loss of resources, especially personnel. In this presentation, we report on a sustainability review of the program using a practical framework and a conceptual framework. The practical framework is the University of Pittsburg's Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (https://sites.haa.pitt.edu/sustainabilityroadmap/). The conceptual framework is Kristin R. …

Preserving The Uncrawlable: Serving The Server, Andrew Mcdonnell

Library Presentations

Many of the challenges inherent in archiving dynamic web content revolve around the capture and playback of ever-evolving social media sites. However, older dynamic web content that has ceased to evolve continues to elude the tools and conventions most widely available to web archivists. This presentation will share work conducted to preserve an online digital humanities project that defied preservation via Archive-It and other crawler-based web archiving tools. The presentation will, moreover, offer an exploration of alternative options for web archivists struggling to preserve sites dependent on server-side processes for their essential functionality.

Suda On Line is a collaborative digital …

Will Our Future Selves Thank Us? An Examination Of Born-Digital Curation Practices At The University Of Kentucky Libraries, Megan M. Mummey, Andrew Mcdonnell, Emily B. Collier, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

Cultural heritage resources are increasingly being produced and distributed digitally yet the world of physical materials has not declined. Can you realign current resources to meet future collection needs while at the same time continuing with existing collection needs? Analog-based archival theory and practice is still relevant, but born-digital formats make acquisition, appraisal, resource allocation, collection management, and external relationships much more challenging. These challenges range from monetary and environmental costs to resource allocation to social media technology woes to campus-wide IT relationships.

In this presentation, University of Kentucky archivists share practical tips, tools, and mental frameworks to identify gaps, …

Are Transformative Agreements Worth It? An Analysis Of Open Access Publication Data At The University Of Kentucky, Ben Rawlins

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Open access publishing is continuing to grow as funders such as cOAlition S, National Institutes of Health, and the White House implement mandates and requirements that publicly funded research be made immediately available for public consumption. Publishers have adopted open access as a business model through transformative agreements that combine subscription and publishing fees. However, it is unclear whether these agreements are beneficial for libraries. This article discusses a project by the University of Kentucky Libraries to gather and analyze open access publication data to aid in the evaluation of transformative agreement proposals. This article also discusses how the University …

Making Love Easier: Automating Communication For Better Relationship Building For Web Archives, Emily Collier

2024 R&I Day

Starting in Fall of 2023, Ruth Bryan and Emily Collier began researching sustainability for the Web Archiving Program, which led them to building communication channels with the University of Kentucky Office of Public Relations and Marketing Web Content Development group. By tightening this channel, we hope to initiate the archival mindset right at the moment of content creation, as well as limit gaps in our web archives collection as the PR team is directly involved in monitoring sites that go live and expire. Part of this tightening of communication has been finding ways to automate alerts when changes are made …

What’S Gobbling This Hard Drive? Deduplication, Advanced File Search, And File Characterization Beyond Your Wildest Dreams With Treesize For Windows, Andrew Mcdonnell

2024 R&I Day

This short demonstration provided participants with an introduction to TreeSize Professional. At the Special Collections Research Center, I use this as part of my born-digital appraisal and processing workflows, but we have also begun using it to determine what sorts of file duplication we might have across multiple folders on one or more networked drives. This comprehensive de-duplication helps reduce confusion and very real expense. Even if otherwise identical files use different naming conventions, TreeSize is able to determine where duplicate files exist in multiple locations. In those moments where you encounter nested folders containing backups of backups of backups, …

“Integrated Library Planning: A New Model For Strategic And Dynamic Planning, Management, And Assessment” [Book Review], Julene L. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Review of "Integrated Library Planning: A New Model for Strategic and Dynamic Planning, Management, and Assessment” by Myka Kennedy Stephens.

Looking Back: An International Collaboration: The Life Of Robert M. Johnson From Enslavement In Lexington, Kentucky To A Medical Practice In Sheffield, England, Reinette F. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Robert M. Johnson was an African American expatriate who had been enslaved for 24 years in Lexington, KY, to Dorothea D. Christian and her husband the Rev. James Fishback. Johnson escaped and gained his freedom sometime after 1841, thereafter making his way to Canada, where he stayed for several years before leaving North America to become a medical student in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a medical doctor in Sheffield, England.

Making A Grand Contribution: Professional Development Resources For Leveraging Assessment Data To Advance Equity, Julene L. Jones, Ciji Heiser, Glenn A. Phillips

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Describes professional development opportunities collected by the Grand Challenges Equity Implementation Team to advance equity in institutional assessment.

Julene L. Jones, Ciji A. Heiser and Glenn A. Phillips. "Making a Grand Contribution: Professional Development Resources for Leveraging Assessment Data to Advance Equity" Assessment Update Vol. 36 Iss. 1 (2024) p. 11 - 14 ISSN: 1536-0725

Will Our Future Selves Thank Us? An Examination Of Born-Digital Curation Practices At The University Of Kentucky Libraries, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Ruth E. Bryan, Megan M. Mummey, Emily B. Collier

Library Presentations

University of Kentucky archivists share practical tips, tools, and mental frameworks to identify gaps, pitfalls, and opportunities in stewarding born-digital collections. Topics include managing a shifting digital preservation landscape, instituting comprehensive appraisal practices while considering environmental impact, curating born-digital and web-based university records, and aligning resources with future collection needs.

Pathways To Discovery: Exploring Transdisciplinary Learning With Primary Sources, Matthew Strandmark

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.

Uk Libraries' "Wildcat Histories:" Preserving Student Activist Social Media Content, Ruth E. Bryan, Taylor C. Leigh, Emily B. Collier

Library Presentations

In this presentation, we describe the current web archiving program at the University of Kentucky Libraries; provide an overview of the "Wildcat Histories" activist student organization social media preservation project, funded by Project STAND; discuss the technical aspects of the "Wildcat Histories" project; and the project's current status and lessons learned.

On Being Seen, On Being Legible, On Being: A Black, Agender Perspective On A Career In Libraries, Adrian Williams

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

This ethnographic essay explores the author’s journey in understanding, contending with, and building a career in academic libraries that is affirming to their Black and agender identity. The essay discusses the hypervisibility of the author’s race in libraries, in contrast to the invisibility of their transness, and how that contrast has affected how they navigate their work as a pre-tenure librarian.