Reflecting on the place of regional university libraries and archival collections

Reviewed by: College and University Archives: Readings in Theory and Practice Lori A. Goetschlgoetsch@ksu.edu College and University Archives: Readings in Theory and Practice, ed. Christopher J. PromEllen D. Swain. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008. 357p. $54.95 ($39.95 SAA members) (ISBN 1-931666-27-X) College and university archives are taking on increasing importance in the age of electronic communications and due to a growing emphasis on providing access to unique collections of university administrative and academic assets. Academic libraries and archives must continue to steward print documents while also addressing the many challenges of electronic records management. How do we capture institutional records that are born digital and correspondence that only lives in an electronic environment? This edited collection by experts in the field, including some reprints of previously published work, captures the current challenges and opportunities in college and university archives—from policy development and management to new modes of user service and access. In the preface, the editors present the collection from the vantage point of a similar work published in 1979, noting that, although the fundamental issue of how best to preserve and provide access to archival resources remains, the environment in which that issue is addressed has been complicated by many factors, not the least of which is technology. The first essay by Nicholas C. Burckel, “Academic Archives: [End Page 450] Retrospect and Prospect,” expands on this theme. Burckel, a former president of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and dean of libraries emeritus from Marquette University, reflects on his own career and research in the archival profession as well as SAA survey data identifying new and emerging archival roles and challenges and the initiatives for responding to these challenges, including documentation and collaboration. The second essay by Helen R. Tibbo, “The Impact of Information Technology on Academic Archives in the Twenty-first Century,” expands on a major challenge identified by Burckel and others. Tibbo, professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides an excellent survey of the many technological advances that have had an impact on access, preservation, and user services in archival settings and offers some speculation on what the future holds. Technology continues as a theme in other essays on the topics of electronic publishing by Robert P. Spindler and finding aids by Richard V. Szary. The collection does not limit its focus to technology, however. Several essays examine approaches to archives fundamentals such as processing and documentation. Examples include articles on results of a survey on descriptive practices and its impact on efficiency of processing and immediacy of access; collecting oral histories of student life; documenting campus diversity; and developing a policy on faculty papers. The importance of outreach and user service is also emphasized, particularly the delicate balance between access and privacy in archival collections. Essays by Tim Pyatt and Kenneth D. Crews discuss changes in the law since the 1979 collection of essays and update the impact of these changes. Pyatt provides a clear and concise explanation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as other public laws that affect electronic records management and data archiving. Crews applies his prodigious copyright expertise to the archival field, providing a recent history of fair use and four strategies of action that archivists can adopt to “minimize legal impediments to the use and worth of manuscript collections.” (p. 239) As an academic library dean, the issues and opportunities discussed in this collection hit close to home. Therefore, although certainly valuable to practicing archivists, the volume may have even more benefit to administrators, especially those of us not trained in archival sciences. An archivist colleague of mine has urged me and my library colleagues to have a deeper and broader understanding of this sister profession, and College and University Archives: Readings in Theory and Practice serves as an excellent means of beginning to achieve that understanding. [End Page 451] Lori A. Goetsch Kansas State University Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Pivotal Role of Student Labor in the Clarke Historical Library's Moving Image Access and Preservation Project Marian J. Matyn (bio) and Tressa Graves (bio) INTRODUCTION TO THE CLARKE, ITS INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT, AND ITS HOLDINGS The Clarke is both a historical library and archives.1 It is one of the major archives and historical libraries in the state of Michigan and the only one in the northern Lower Peninsula. Its major collecting focus is Michigan history, children's literature, and Central Michigan University (CMU) archives. While the primary-source collections include a wide variety of formats, moving image film constitutes only a small part of the overall collection. Of the nearly 8,000 cubic feet of archival collections in the Clarke stacks, approximately 110 cubic feet are 8mm and 16mm films (450,000 linear feet total). Summary Information on AV Materials in the Clarke Most of the Clarke's films are 16mm acetate film stock, although there is also a small number of 8mm films. The majority of the Clarke's film materials are a part of the Channel 9 & 10 News Collection, 1950s–1980s. Channel 9 & 10 was and remains the main TV news station for the thirty-five counties in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, the entire Upper Peninsula, and parts of Canada. The initial estimate was that the Channel 9 & 10 Collection totaled approximately three thousand reels of film shelved in seventy cubic feet of archival shelving in variously sized containers. These films are the only extant copies of the station's news production from the period. Other films in the Clarke's collection, mostly with a Michigan or CMU focus, are distributed throughout numerous paper-based archival collections and total an additional 20,500 linear feet. [End Page 27] Identification of Significant Subsections of the AV Collection and Their Challenges The main issues faced are lack of description, lack of donor forms, and some level of physical deterioration. No particular series or subseries is in worse condition than another. One CMU film, Football Scrimmage (September 1950), has significant acetate decay and a strong vinegar odor. Seventeen reels of the Channel 9 & 10 News Collection are fused together in a solid mass, an issue known as blocking, thus leaving the films unviewable and unidentifiable. Several Channel 9 & 10 News clips have color dye fading and are now magenta hued. The Clarke has inadequate funds for conservation or digitization of these few films that are badly deteriorated. In the case of Football Scrimmage, it is possible that we will be able to find a CMU alum who will be willing to pay for digitization of the film. Not knowing what is on the blocked films makes it hard to find donors. Many small manuscript-focused archives with film collections are unaware that the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) exists and is willing to help them locate other archives better able to care for their film.2 Staff Context of the Archives and Identification of the Authors/Project Leaders The Clarke has six full-time staff members and student employees, none of whom is trained or educated in film access and preservation. Until 2011, archivist Marian Matyn was a lone arranger archivist. Although there are now two archivists, moving images are not part of the newer archivist's responsibility. Matyn and undergraduate student Tressa Graves began the project in 2012 to identify, rehouse, preserve, and make accessible the archival film collections. Neither Matyn nor Graves was a film specialist when the project began, although Graves had interned during summer 2012 at the Alaska Film Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. When planning the project, Matyn and Graves lacked established backgrounds, education, and extensive experience with film. Prior to the film preservation and access project, only very basic archival housing and description were completed for films. Significantly, the Clarke is the first university archives in Michigan to embark on a film access and preservation project. The Henry Ford, located 152 miles southeast of CMU, was the first Michigan cultural heritage institution to initiate a film preservation project. The Clarke was the second institution in the state to do so, closely followed by Michigan State University (MSU...

I am grateful to the Editor for giving me excuse to delve into the fossil record. I confidently hope that my article was written before most of The Australian Library Journal’s present readership was born. I am happy to stay with my pragmatic attempt at a definition of research as an intensified search undertaken with the hope of finding something and with the intention of making some use of what is found. I am happy also to stand by my argument on the necessity of research in librarianship. This necessity was never in doubt in archives administration with its integral relationship with history, and I am delighted that librarians seem now to perceive the relevance of research in other fields to their concerns - in modern parlance, the other ‘I’ fields.

Coverage This select and annotated bibliography covers the area of collection management, largely as defined by the scope of this volume. It is limited to material published since 1990, as there are several excellent bibliographies covering earlier material (see, for example, the bibliographies of Thomas Nisonger listed below in ‘Collection evaluation and review’). Within this time span, the primary focus is upon more recent material as with the increasing introduction of electronic resources change has been so marked. Arrangement A conscious decision was taken not to arrange the material included here in the sequence of the chapters in this volume. This was for two reasons: first, each chapter already lists ‘Further reading’ as its final section. Second, there are some topics – such as copyright or government publications – which are discussed in several chapters. It seemed more useful to bring material on these topics together. Following the general material which appears immediately below, items are grouped into broad subject areas, arranged alphabetically. Collection management journal titles Acquisitions Librarian Against the Grain www.against-the-grain.com/ The Bottom Line Collection Building Collection Management Library Collections, Acquisitions and Technical Services Library Resources and Technical Services Serials The following titles are also worth checking for collection management articles. Ariadne www.ariadne.ac.uk Australian Academic & Research Libraries College & Research Libraries D-Lib www.dlib.org/ Electronic Library Information Technology & Libraries Journal of Academic Librarianship Journal of Library Administration Journal of Library and Information Science Library Admin and Management Library Hi Tech Library Trends General AcqWeb http://acqweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/acqweb/lis_cd.html [22 April 2001]. Provides comprehensive links to information and resources of interest to acquisitions or collection development librarians. Includes listservs. International in scope. Atkins, S. (1996) Mining automated systems for collection management. Library Administration and Management, 10 (1), 16–19. Describes the way that data from library automated systems may be used for collection development planning and management, urging librarians not to waste this capacity. Baker, D. (ed.) (1997) Resource management in academic libraries, Library Association Publishing. Includes chapters on academic libraries, resource management, old and new universities and colleges of advanced education, total quality management, performance indicators, costing, fund allocation and formulae, research collections, IT, operating costs and space planning. Four of the 16 chapters are by Baker.

University student newspapers have a long history across Australian university campuses of engaging with contemporary social and political issues, often reflecting a sentiment not represented in mainstream media publications. Student newspapers have a demonstrated engagement with radical thinking, dissent and political activism and are an important published record of historical discourses, contributing to a critically informed understanding of the society that produced them. This paper reports on a pilot survey of Australian university holdings of their student newspapers. Findings inform current and future student newspaper collection practices by university libraries and archives, including building ongoing relationships with editorial teams, and recommended improvements for access to this primary source material for future researchers.

In order to overcome the security and integrity problems of the traditional university file information resource sharing model, the paper proposes a new cloud computing-based university file information resource sharing model. Supported by the cloud computing system architecture, the use of cloud computing search algorithms to fully excavate university archives information resources to realize the comprehensive sharing of university information archives, and calculate the utility parameters of university archives information resource sharing based on the mining results of cloud computing, and build a communication consumption matrix for the sharing of archives information resources in colleges and universities, and complete the construction of the sharing model of archives information resources in colleges. The comparative experiment results show that compared with the traditional sharing model, the intrusion rate and sharing transmission loss of the constructed sharing model are significantly reduced, indicating that the constructed model can effectively realize the sharing of archive information resources in universities and ensure the integrity and safety of archives.

Library history has constituted a significant portion of the research articles published in the Australian Library Journal and in Australian Academic & Research Libraries. By contrast, archives history has attracted much less interest from researchers publishing in Archives and Manuscripts. The author uses these articles together with papers delivered at the seven Australian Library History Forums convened between 1984 and 1996 to provide snapshots of library and archives history producers and production in an attempt to explain this disparity. He demonstrates that research higher degrees have strongly driven the production of library (and, to a lesser extent, archives) history but suggests that archives and records professionals have been more ambivalent towards history and historical studies than their library counterparts. The roots of this ambivalence may lie in debates over library control of archives and the professional identity of archivists in the 1950s and 1960s.

ABSTRACTAn analysis of the authors of Australian library research articles published in The Australian Library Journal and Australian Academic & Research Libraries over the ten-year period 1985–1994 has been made to examine their characteristics: whether they wrote alone, or with others, what sex they were, and what were their institutional affiliations. Some comparisons are made with similar international studies, and some recommendations are made.

In conditions of economic instability and crisis, the effective provision of resources to local communities becomes critical for their sustainable development. This article aims to examine the nature of resource provision and the types of resources available to local communities. It also proposes ways to enhance the efficiency of community resource provision by attracting investments and establishing an accounting system. The study takes a comprehensive approach to analysing the resource provision of local communities, taking into account accounting and investment aspects. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the resource accounting system and investment opportunities. It is hypothesised that implementing a community resource passport would increase the efficiency of resource provision and the investment attractiveness of local communities. A variety of general scientific and specific methods are employed, including a critical analysis of theoretical approaches and regulatory documents. Methods of analysis and synthesis were employed to combine different theoretical approaches to resource provision. System and structural analysis enabled the creation of a standardised local community resource passport template. The concept of community resource provision as a system comprising a resource base and a management mechanism for achieving sustainable development goals has been clarified. The classification of community resources according to twelve characteristics, including origin, structure, strategic significance, and economic areas of use, has been improved. A resource management mechanism consisting of planning, organisation, control, evaluation and optimisation of resource supply and distribution has been proposed. The structure of the community resource passport has been developed to systematise information on resource provision. It has been established that the effective organisation of the resource provision system is key to attracting investments. The implementation of analytical accounting of resources for operational control over their use has been proven to be necessary. The study's findings expand the theoretical principles of local community resource management and contribute to the development of conceptual anti-crisis management approaches at the local level. Local governments can implement the proposed community resource passport to improve the efficiency of resource management and attract investment. The recommendations for organising a resource accounting system will improve planning and control in communities.

The exploitation of common property resources has often witnessed rapid degradation due to indiscriminate exploitation for selfish reasons. The Oku Community Forest is a replica of this type of forest that has been under human influence since time immemorial. Taking into consideration the fact that institutions have failed to meet up with sustainable management strategies, the management of these forest resources depends unavoidably on the holistic approach which requires local communities and institutions to make use of indigenous technology in resource management. This study focuses on the indigenous strategies in communal resource management in the Oku Community Forest. Data for the study were collected using both primary and secondary sources with much emphasis on the administration of questionnaires. The data were analysed in both qualitative and quantitative terms. The relationship between population increase, communal resource exploitation and the impact on the environment was correlated through the use of the chi square. From field evidence, there is a relationship between population increase, the over exploitation of communal resources and communal resource degradation. The study therefore recommends the community based resource management as a panacea for sustainable community forest resources in the Oku Community Forest. This will help to limit over exploitation and thus could enhance a sustainable management of the communal forest resources.

Finding Sisters in Cyberspace: Digitization and the Archives of Women’s Religious Communities Fernanda Perrone3 Introduction Roman Catholic sisters are everywhere in cyberspace: on websites, blogs, podcasts, and many social media platforms. Resources range from the online news and information resource Global Sisters Report to the faith community and vocation resource A Nun’s Life Ministry to a women religious app sponsored by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.4 Individuals have created resources such as Willing Hearts about the experience of Holy Cross Sisters as nurses during the U.S. Civil War, which the authors describe as creative non-fiction.5 New websites appear all the time. Comprehensive, robust, and scholarly digital projects documenting women religious have been fewer and more difficult to find, however, but several interesting projects are currently under development. A few years ago, I was sitting next to a prioress of a Benedictine community in Ohio at a conference banquet. She told me that her community had only seven members and she did not think it had a future. As the de facto congregation archivist, she was concerned about preserving its legacy and making that story accessible to researchers. She told me that volunteers had begun digitizing the archives by scanning documents. This story remained with me as I wondered how, where, and in what format the sisters were preserving these documents. [End Page 4] When I was invited to participate in this session, I was excited by the prospect of investigating digital archives and resources related to women’s religious communities. Click for larger view View full resolution A sample image from the Providence Archives in Seattle: Sr. John of God sewing vestments, Sacred Heart Academy, ca. 1913. Courtesy Providence Archives, Seattle. Image #67.D4.84 Women Religious Community Archives The records of women’s religious communities can be found at many types of institutions, including colleges, universities, archdiocesan, and diocesan archives. Most archival collections, however, are maintained by the religious communities themselves. Women religious community archives are private entities that serve their members. Like business archives, they have no obligation to make archival resources available to researchers, although most do to some extent.6 The Archivists of Congregations of Women Religious (ACWR) is an independent professional organization for these archives. As an ACWR associate member, I have access to the membership directory, which I surveyed to explore digital resources on members’ websites. The parameters of the directory necessarily limited my survey to American communities or American provinces of international communities. [End Page 5] While almost all religious communities have websites, most community archives do not have their own pages on the community’s website. Most congregational websites include historical content, such as timelines, photographs, and historical information. A few communities have created more comprehensive digital resources, which tend to be attached to larger provincial centers. The Providence Archives in Seattle makes available historical records documenting the Sisters of Providence in the West and Providence Health and Services. The website of the archives includes a digital collections database of several thousand photographs and documents created using the CONTENTdm™ digital collection management system.7 Another example is the Digital Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province, which include digitized books, pamphlets, and oral history transcripts.8 Another model is being used by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who are building a digital archives to bring together dispersed community archives. The purpose of the Virtual Archive is to “lower the obstacles between the people interested in the history of the Sisters and the Order and finding materials in the archival collections. It also helps further part of our archival mission of making our collections available to the current Sisters, relatives of Sisters, alumnae and staff at schools where Sisters taught, local communities, and researchers.”9 Most religious community archives have very limited resources of personnel and budget. Concerned with basic preservation and access, they have not able to create large digitization projects on their own. Because of declining numbers and an aging membership, religious communities are increasingly centralizing and merging, at the same time as continuing to absorb the records of closed institutions, particularly schools and...

ABSTRACTScholars have highlighted the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. Universities are generally equipped to address victimization through a range of resources, including counseling and psychological services. These resources are instrumental for posttrauma recovery, but students must be aware of and willing to use available services. This study used a sample of 505 survey responses collected at a mid-sized, public, Southern university regarding community and campus resource knowledge, familiarity, and service use. The majority of participants were unaware of resources. Females reported increased community resource familiarity compared to males. Multivariate models revealed distress disclosure, sexual victimization history, and race were significant predictors of service use but criminal justice major and law enforcement career plans were not significant. Implications are discussed.

Aaron D. Purcell's Academic Archives: Managing the Next Generation of College and University Archives, Records, and Special Collections is a work that looks at the world of academic archives in a t...

Academic Archives: Managing the Next Generation of College and University Archives, Records, and Special Collections. By Aaron D. Purcell. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2012. 315 p. $95 softcover (ISBN: 978-1-55570-769-9). In Academic Archives, Purcell takes a broad approach to a small area of the library world, addressing many aspects of the operations within the narrow purview of an academic archives. He divides the book into three parts, with part 1 describing the current state of archives in an academic setting. In this section, he begins by outlining the steps required to obtain a professional position in an academic archives, the mission of academic archives, and the role of these archives under the larger umbrella of special collections. Part 1 is observational in tone, looking at archives from an external perspective. In part 2, Purcell pursues a more operational approach. This part, which is nearly two-thirds of the book, is a discussion of the specific tasks required to build or update an academic archives program. Here Purcell also describes in detail the different aspects of operating an academic archives, including acquisition, processing, reference services, and digitization. Part 3 consists of a single chapter, focusing on emerging trends and the next generation of academic archives. To balance the other two sections, more weight should have been given to this area--particularly because the subtitle of the book specifically addresses the future of these collections rather than the present. In terms of physical format, the book is well organized. Purcell breaks up the sections nicely so that the reader does not become encumbered by long sections of weighty prose and can proceed directly to specific sections of interest. He also has inserted grey blocks throughout the text, containing bulleted lists that highlight important concepts in the surrounding paragraphs. This feature is helpful for the casual reader who is simply skimming the text for the high points or for those who are interested in previewing the content of the book before investing the time and effort to read further. Purcell includes occasional photographs and diagrams to add visual interest, but these are sporadic and not particularly dynamic. Some of the loss in impact may be because the images are black and white rather than color. Although color illustrations may have been cost-prohibitive, the lack of color prevents the level of detail necessary to appreciate the content of the photographs. As a result, some of the images are more useful than others. His textual descriptions of complicated processes are thorough and effective, however, which make the images superfluous. Part 1 combines three very different aspects of academic archives under the umbrella of Archives and the Academic Environment. The first chapter targets one of the primary audiences for which this book would be appropriate--prospective archivists. Chapter 2 is more of a survey of what academic archives are, including a substantial section on the role that technology plays in the modern academic library. Chapter 3 offers an overview of the history of special collections, followed by an examination of their structure today and the types of materials one might expect to find. …

The publish or perish adage is alive and well for early career academics (ECAs), who are under increasing pressure from higher education institutions for improved research performance. This paper explores the way in which ECAs respond to the managerial imperatives of one Australian regional university; specifically, a meta-reflexive lens was used to examine narrative data from ECAs to determine how institutional performance measures influence their participation in research teams. Three main themes were identified in the data: The ‘pull’ of institutional priorities, ‘Getting a leg up’ through teamwork, and Finding a way forward in personal values. ECAs responded to managerial imperatives through compliance and showed awareness of the importance of collaboration with established researchers in furthering their own personal career interests. At the same time, the data also reveal that ECAs working at this regional Australian university refused to compromise on the educational and research contributions they could make to their disciplines and the cultural capital of their local communities. This latter pursuit of autonomy provided these academics with personal satisfaction and a sense of academic integrity in relation to conducting research with impact while simultaneously meeting performance targets aimed at raising the reputation of their institution.