Archival Science Commons^™

Streamlining Archives Reference Through Online Task Management, Jay-Marie Bravent, Daniel Weddington

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Following an organizational shift that flattened the hierarchy and prioritized security, use, and collection management, research services at UK Libraries SCRC continued to face logistical roadblocks to meeting patron reference and research needs. Specifically, SCRC relied on an often chaotic system of listserv streams monitored by 10-15 team members to manage patron interaction and internal communication. This approach left no easily discernible way for the research services team to assign tasks, facilitate collaboration, monitor progress, or derive statistics. This article will discuss how SCRC successfully implemented a streamlined, task management approach to archives reference using freely available online tools.

Show Us Your Omaha: Combating Lgbtq+ Archival Silences, Angela J. Kroeger, Yumi Ohira, Amy Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries offers a variety of unique and specialized collections in the Archives & Special Collections (ASC) for UNO and Omaha community members. In 2015, ASC began planning for preserving and providing access to Omaha’s LGBTQ+ history through the Queer Omaha Archives. Archival silences were defined by archivist Rodney Carter as the manifestation of the actions of the powerful in denying the marginalized access to archives with further definition by archivists and researchers expanding this definition. The UNO Libraries has invested in developing digital engagement as a strategic priority through building infrastructure and expanding …

Archeota, Spring 2017, Kimberlee Frederick, Rebecca Leung

Archeota

No abstract provided.

Privacy And Anonymity In A Reference Librarianship Digital Archive, Emily K. Chan

Digital Initiatives Symposium

This poster will discuss the ethical concerns with the processing, digitizing, and organizing of the Pacific Library Partnership’s System Reference Center (SRC) reference question archive, which contains material artifacts of complex reference questions from 1972-2004.

Reference services, a core librarian responsibility, centers on connecting users with answers, materials, and the information that will satisfy their research needs. With the proliferation of online materials and ubiquity of search engines, the nature of reference services has changed dramatically over the last decades.

The archive is comprised of questions submitted for reference librarian review by other reference librarians who had exhausted local resources …

The Trouble With Transitions: Preserving Government Records During A Presidential Transition, Sarah C. Slinger, Nicholas Mignanelli

Scholarly Works

Times of transition from administration to administration are often, if not always, trying periods for the United States and its people. In particular, concerns arise over the preservation of documents from one administration to the next. This is especially true when the torch of executive power passes from one party to the other. Although preservation of information is a seemingly objective endeavor, it is difficult to abstain from politics when the documents involved are inherently political. Recently, the Trump Administration has expressed its intentions to scale back the size of government and take key offices—such as the Department of Energy—in …

More Than A Memory: Exploring Purdue University's History Through Objects, Kristina Bross

Scholarly Publishing Services e-Books

More Than a Memory: Exploring Purdue University's History Through Objects extends a 2014 undergraduate effort, which resulted in the publication Little Else Than a Memory: Purdue Students Search for the Class of 1904. Purdue students in 2016-2017 academic year sought to understand the history of Purdue University and to recover the student experience more than 100 years prior, at the turn of the twentieth century. This research, conducted primarily within Purdue Archives and Special Collections, includes choosing, investigating, and analyzing the material objects those students left behind.

Archives Of The Southern Sociological Society: A Repository Of Decisions, Events, And People Affecting Sociology In The Southern United States, Ruth E. Bryan, James G. Hougland

Library Presentations

Since 1958, the Archives of the Southern Sociological Society have been housed in the Special Collections Research Center in the University of Kentucky Libraries. The collection includes official minutes, correspondence, newsletters, membership lists, photographs, and other official documents generated by the Society and dating from the Society's founding in 1935 to the present. These records of historical value have been provided by presidents, secretaries, treasurers, committee chairs, executive officers, and other Society officials so that the Archives may be available to scholars who wish to explore the history of the Society and the development of Sociology in the Southern United …

What Are Archives?, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

This presentation summarizes what archives are, what archivists do, how one becomes an archivist in the United States, why archives matter, the differences and similarities among archives, libraries, and museums, and what's in a Special Collections Research Center

Curriculum Connections And Outreach Opportunities: Faculty And Graduate Student Use Of Special Collections, Stephanie Shreffler

Roesch Library Faculty Presentations

Discover faculty and graduate students’ varying preferences regarding curriculum integration of special collections, their interest in using particular formats of materials, and their shared desire for greater outreach from special collections.

Altmetrics And Archives, Elizabeth Joan Kelly

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Altmetrics are an alternative to traditional measurement of the impact of published resources. While altmetrics are primarily used by researchers and institutions to measure the impact of scholarly publications online, they can also be used by archives to measure the impact of their diverse online holdings, including digitized and born-digital collections, digital exhibits, repository websites, and online finding aids. Furthermore, altmetrics may fill a need for user engagement assessments for cultural heritage organizations. This article introduces the concept of altmetrics for archives and discusses barriers to adoption, best practices for collection, and potential further areas of study.

Review Of Digital Preservation Essentials, Tawnya Mosier Keller

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Digital Preservation Essentials.

Review Of Appraisal And Acquisition Strategies, Jean Deken

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Appraisal and Acquisition Strategies.

Python For Archivists: Breaking Down Barriers Between Systems, Gregory Wiedeman

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Working with a multitude of digital tools is now a core part of an archivist’s skillset. We work with collection management systems, digital asset management systems, public access systems, ticketing or request systems, local databases, general web applications, and systems built on smaller systems linked through application programming interfaces (APIs). Over the past years, more and more of these applications have evolved to meet a variety of archival processes. We no longer expect a single tool to solve all our needs and embraced the “separation of concerns” design principle that smaller, problem-specific and modular systems are more effective than large …

Painless Portal Partnerships: Collaboration And Its Challenges For Small Organizations, Christine Mcevilly

Publications and Research

This article addresses challenges inherent in collaborative archival projects involving both large institutions and small historical societies. It identifies these unique problems and outlines potential solutions to overcome these issues. Examples are drawn from the Portal to American Jewish History project and contextualized within the professional literature on ethnic or community archives and archival collaboration. This project collected metadata from a wide range of Jewish history archives and aggregated the records in a single searchable website.

The Austin Archives Bazaar: A Collaborative Outreach Event, Daniel Alonzo, Amy Rushing, Kristy Sorensen

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

The Austin Archives Bazaar (AAB) is a biennial, multi-institutional, community outreach event organized by the Archivists of Central Texas (ACT), an all-volunteer group of archivists in Austin, Texas. It is designed to be free, fun, and appealing to the general public, including folks who may not even know exactly what an archives is. This paper looks at the planning and execution of the 2016 Bazaar and reflects back on how it built on lessons learned in 2014 with a focus on issues of governance, fundraising, publicity, logistics, and the participating repository perspective. This case study of a creative, multi-institutional outreach …

Hidden Figures Class Museum Project, Amanda Benigni, Anna Smith

Museum Assignments

In the secondary English/Language Arts classroom, inquiry-based learning is most often adopted as a method for teaching literary analysis. But teachers too often overlook the fact that literary analysis is not the only means of facilitating inquiry-based learning. Research, particularly archival research, can provide students with yet another opportunity for inquiry and reflective thinking.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (both the mass-market paperback and the Young Reader's Edition), is a text that is especially well-suited to teaching archival research skills to young learners, as it is itself the product of a rigorous, thoughtful, and purposeful research project conducted by …

Purdue Data Orientation Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Users, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Orientation Checklist is intended to help a data user navigate an unfamiliar dataset, research material or digital collection. Whether joining a new research lab or downloading data from a public repository, navigating new data can be confusing and frustrating. This checklist was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in …

Purdue Data Reuse Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Producers, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Reuse Checklist is intended to help a data producer verify their research data is well-described and read for reuse by a third party. It was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in areas such as raw “data” collection, sensitive or personal information management, and defining user groups. Mullins brought …

Utilizing Student Workers At The Digital Library Of Georgia, Mandy L. Mastrovita, Donnie Summerlin

Georgia Library Quarterly

Libraries and archives have become increasingly reliant on student employees to perform duties essential to the daily work of making cultural heritage materials accessible to patrons. This article details how students are recruited, trained, managed, and mentored from the perspective of supervisors at the Digital Library of Georgia. Topics discussed include hiring procedures, training techniques, work assigned to undergraduate and graduate students, the handling of archival materials, digital imaging, metadata, and social media. The article will also examine methods for creating a rewarding and educational work environment for students that promotes the library profession.

Advances In Research Using The C-Span Archives, Robert X. Browning

Purdue University Press Books

This book is a guide to the latest research using the C-SPAN Archives. In this book, nine authors present original work using the video archives to study presidential debates, public opinion and Congress, analysis of the Violence Against Women Act and the Great Lakes freshwater legislation, as well as President Clinton’s grand jury testimony. The C-SPAN Archives contain over 220,000 hours of first run digital video of the nation’s public affairs record. These and other essays serve as guides for scholars who want to explore the research potential of this robust public policy and communications resource.

How To Have A Successful Archives Crawl On A Shoestring Budget, Maurice R. Blackson, Carlos Pelley, Julia Stringfellow

Library Scholarship

Central Washington University Archives and Special Collections hosts an annual archives crawl. This article reports about evolution and promotion of the event, and describes the archives and museums that participated in 2016.

Sailing Into Metrics: Rethinking And Implementing Metrics And Assessment In Archives, Amy C. Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

In 2014, SAA and RBMS appointed joint task forces to address the challenges that archival repositories face related to metrics and assessment. The task forces are drafting proposed metrics and standards, but calls for how to implement data gathering continue. This session will share case studies on the implementation of data gathering from the ground up, metrics and assessment in instruction and reference, and identifying the best and most efficient ways to quantify resources for assessment and decision making. The session will also address the transition from manual data gathering to tools like Aeon and LibInsight and the administrative outcomes …

Bringing Special Collections To Life: Open-Source Tools For Digital Exhibit Creation, Andrew Welp

Scholarship and Professional Work

In 2014, Butler University Libraries received an institutional "Innovation Fund" grant to implement a large-scale digitization project to facilitate access and discovery of unique institutional holdings. Today, the Butler Digital History Initiative [digitalhistory.butlerlibraryservices.org] is comprised of several digital collections and interactive "digital exhibits" providing additional context and accessibility to archival materials to external and internal stakeholders. This program will highlight the open-source tools, procedures, and partnerships that enabled Butler University Libraries to bring their special collections to life.

Image As Evidence: A Citation Analysis Of Visual Resources In American History Scholarship, 2010–2014, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

The author examines the use of visual resources in American history scholarship over a five-year period. The article reports on a citation analysis of 554 images published in two top American history journals from 2010 through 2014. The data collected in this study documents the extent to which images were used in history research and the types of libraries and archival repositories from which historians accessed images. Based on the study data, the article explores characteristics of frequently cited libraries and archival repositories, the capacity in which images function as historical evidence, and implications for libraries based on the findings.

La Culpa La Tiene Derrida: La Praxis Deconstrucionista De Buitrago Y Sus Implicaciones En Mi Quehacer Archivístico, Marisol Ramos

UConn Library Presentations

En esta presentación discutiré como el antropólogo Carlos Buitrago, durante su periodo decontrucionista, influyó mi carrera académica en el campo de la archivística. En mi trabajo trazare el camino recorrido junto con Buitrago, primero como su ayudante de investigación en 1992 en un proyecto analizando los repartos vecinales del pueblo de Adjuntas (1824-1832), luego en 1993, trabajando juntos en el Archivo General de Puerto Rico donde me introdujo a los archivos de aguas de Guayama y el tema de los sistemas de riego en este pueblo durante el siglo XIX, y más tarde en 1999 cuando compartió conmigo sus transcripciones …

The John Stokes And Mary's Gardens Collection, Stephanie Shreffler, Jillian M. Ewalt

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

The John Stokes and Mary’s Gardens Collection documents the research of John S. Stokes Jr. and the history and activities of the Mary’s Gardens movement, a popular Catholic movement related to planting devotional gardens dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This article provides an overview of this collection and a discussion on archival management, preservation, and outreach.

What Is Possible: Setting The Stage For Co-Exploration In Archives And Special Collections, Patrick Williams

Librarian Publications

Chapter Tweleve in Pagowsky, N. & McElroy, K. (2016) Critical Library Pedagogy Handbook, Volume 1: Essays and Workbook Activities. ACRL Press.

University Library-Community Partnership: The Basic Archives Workshop As A Joint Community Support And Collection Development Initiative, Ruth E. Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Yvonne Giles

Library Presentations

In Fall 2015, local historian Yvonne Giles approached staff in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Kentucky Libraries about holding a basic archives workshop for clerks and secretaries of Lexington African American Baptist churches. Staff were excited to partner with Yvonne and held the first workshop for four participants in November 2015. The second workshop, given in early March 2016, attracted 15 participants from a wide variety of local organizations. A third workshop was held in June 2016. Giles and two SCRC staff (Ruth Bryan and Sarah Dorpinghaus) will discuss their individual and library-level reasons for …

Online Access To American Diocesan Archives: Current State And Lessons For Other Repositories, Colleen Hoelscher

Marian Library Faculty Presentations

A 1997 circular letter from the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church said that “In the mind of the Church, archives are places of memory of the Christian community and storehouses of culture for the new evangelization.” As a tool for the evangelizing mission of the Church, it is vital that diocesan archives, as the official repositories of the American Catholic Church, are accessible to scholarly researchers and other patrons. A survey of diocesan archives examined how this category of archival repository is making information about their collections available on the internet. Diocesan websites were surveyed to …

The Queer Omaha Archives, Amy Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The Queer Omaha Archives, in Criss Library Archives & Special Collections at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, preserves and provides access to the history of LGBTQIA+ life in the region. The archives collects, preserves, and makes available to the public material documenting the diverse people and organizations of the greater Omaha region and their experiences and work. In this session, we’ll share how this new community collecting initiative was begun and how the library is extending existing and establishing new relationships with campus and community members to preserve the region’s LGBTQIA+ history and make it available for use.