Born-Digital and Electronic Records – Page 2

School of Journalism Oral Histories Now in CDR

Tom Bowers began his career in the School of Journalism in 1971 and retired in 2006. From 2007 to 2008, he interviewed prominent UNC School of Journalism alumni for his book, “Making News: One Hundred Years of Journalism at Carolina.” The recordings of these interviews are part of University Archives’s School of Journalism collection (#40280), and are now also available in the Carolina Digital Repository. To listen to the interviews, visit the finding aid and click the links to the interviews.

These interviews were digitized and ingested into the CDR through the Legacy Media Project. This project aims to make material on digital storage media in processed collections available through the CDR. Watch this blog for announcements of more material being made available in the CDR through the Legacy Media Project, and read more about the project in this post.

New resource for archiving email

From the News Services Multimedia Library

University Archives has added a new resource to our Records Management Guidelines page, specifically to help you archive your email. Whether you are preparing to transfer your office’s email correspondence to University Archives or just want to back up your personal messages for posterity, our new guide to exporting email will help you along the way.

For more information on managing and archiving email, see the “Email Retention” section of our Guidelines page or contact us at recman@unc.edu.

The Legacy Digital Media Project

For about a year and half now, we have been developing a project at Wilson to acquire material from digital storage media in processed collections and make it available in the Carolina Digital Repository. Having finished the research, workflow development, and testing phases, we have started to implement the project and are making some of these materials available in the CDR as we work through the processed collections. This project aims both to preserve the material safely (instead of on storage media that can be fragile) and to provide easier access to the material for researchers in the collections at Wilson Library.

The material we’re working with is stored on media including 3 1/2 inch, 5 1/4 inch, and 8 inch floppy disks, zip disks, and optical disks like CDs and DVDs. Some of the material, such as the material on the CDs and DVDs, has been accessible via listening or viewing copies, but the material on the other formats will made available for the first time. We are very excited about getting this material to users, so please keep an eye out for further posts as we make new collections available in the CDR.

October 10th is Electronic Records Day

Today is Electronic Records Day! The Council of State Archivists (CoSA) started the tradition of Electronic Records Day three years ago, and has flyers available for personal electronic records, government agencies working with electronic records, and why electronic records may need special attention.

Here at University Archives, we follow our retention schedule for all records regardless of format. We know that sometimes electronic records present special challenges, though! Please see our guidelines page for information about records retention at UNC, including email. The North Carolina State Archives also has helpful guidelines for electronic records. Finally, our FAQ page offers guidance for electronic records issues at UNC.

Of course, every day is Electronic Records Day for us, and we are here to support you if you have electronic records questions!

New V-Day Carolina Collection

Another new collection at University Archives arrived recently! The V-Day collection from the V-Day Carolina student group contains digital and physical material from 2006 to 2014 related to performances of the Vagina Monologues at UNC in English and Spanish.

FinalBenefitFlyer2013 — Flyer for a 2013 V-Day Benefit from the V-Day Carolina Records ( #40431), University Archives.

V-Day Carolina is a chapter of an international organization that works to end violence against girls and women.

Note: The materials referenced in this blog post have not yet been processed and are currently not available to researchers. If you are interested in viewing these materials in person, please contact University Archives before your visit to determine their availability.

New Collection from Carolina Performing Arts

We are happy to announce a new collection of Carolina Performing Arts materials at University Archives. These digital and physical items are from the 2013-2014 season and are the beginning of an exciting collection that includes photos and video along with commemorative items from the Rite of Spring at 100.

Materials from the first transfer in the new Carolina Performing Arts collection

Stay tuned for more about this collection!

A Fond Farewell to Electronic Records Archivist Meg Tuomala

This week we say goodbye to our dear friend and colleague Meg Tuomala, who departs University Archives for a new opportunity.

Tuomala, a UNC alum, has served Wilson Library in several capacities–first as a graduate assistant in Special Collections Technical Services processing UARMS collections, then as Records Services Archivist (2010-2011), and most recently as Electronic Records Archivist (2012-present). In her position as Electronic Records Archivist, she has worked to ensure the proper management and preservation of the University’s growing collections of born-digital materials.

Due to recent departures, University Archives will be without permanent staff for the time being. Requests for consultations and trainings may be put on hold until permanent replacements are hired, but UARMS will continue to approve and accept records transfers and answer any questions about records retention and disposition in the interim.

Please continue to email transfer forms, questions, and general inquiries to recman@unc.edu. Staff at the Wilson Special Collections Library will continue to monitor this email and respond to incoming messages. You may also call (919) 962-6402 to speak with staff who can answer your records management questions.

A Finding Aid for Web Archives

We started archiving websites in January 2013 through Archive-It, and now there is a finding aid for our harvested websites. Our web archives are constantly growing, and we are working on expanding our archiving to YouTube and social media.

We welcome your suggestions for UNC websites to harvest, please let us know in the comments!

NARA’s Capstone Email Initiative: A Virtual Discussion

Last week, Electronic Records Archivist Meg Tuomala participated in a virtual discussion about the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) Capstone Email Initiative, which gives guidance on a new way for federal agencies to manage email records. The discussion was led by Arian Ravanbakhsh and Beth Cron, both records management policy analysts in the Office of the Chief Records Officer at NARA.

The discussion was hosted by the Society of American Archivists‘ Records Management Roundtable, and a video recording is available here. Arian and Beth give a great overview of the Initiative and weigh-in on several questions and considerations surrounding it for not just federal agencies, but state governments, universities, and private organizations too.

If you’re at all interested in the records management side of UARMS’ work, we hope that you can take some time to view the recording.

UARMS is very interested in applying the Capstone method of capturing and archiving email of enduring value generated at UNC. As discussed in the recording and addressed in the Initiative, it’s not a perfect solution, but it could be a practical and real way for us to make strides towards preserving email– a format that has become integral to our work over the past 20 years and thus serves to document the history of the University in the 21st century.

C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A: www.unc.edu circa 1997

The UNC Libraries started a web archiving project in January 2013 (read more about that here), but the Internet Archive has been saving websites for much, much longer. In fact, they have saved over 366 BILLION web pages since 1996, accessible through the Wayback Machine.

In the Wayback Machine you can see an archive of UNC.edu since 1997, not to mention tons of other websites. Take a moment to search for some of your favorite websites and see what they looked like 10 (or more!) years ago. Not surprisingly, the Web has changed quite a bit since then.

Here is a snapshot of UNC’s homepage from April , 27 1997 featuring a very creative and informative acrostic linking to University departments and offices.

Does anyone else think we should bring back the acrostic? What would your acrostic be?