College and University Archives: Readings in Theory and Practice

by Christopher J. Prom

The 13 essays in this volume offer provocative commentary and analysis regarding the ways in which archivists best document college and university campuses and serve users. Three intertwined themes run through this reader: the opportunities and challenges posed by ever-changing technology, the importance of cooperation and collaboration beyond the walls of the archives, and the necessity for a proactive approach in undertaking the academic archival enterprise. As the essays gathered here demonstrate, archivists can and must play an active role in documenting the character and history of their institutions by applying their talents to the challenges of this new century.

Genres: Library Science, Nonfiction

357 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading College and University Archives put me in mind of a previous book, Archival Strategies and Techniques by Michael Ray Hill, which cautions researchers about the possibility of archivists being antagonistic or even downright hostile. As noted in my review, I was surprised by this. The book was published in 1993 and in my experience such behavior runs completely counter to our professional values. Elizabeth Yakel's essay "Managing Expectations, Expertise, and Effort While Extending Services to Researchers in Academic Archives," however, notes that many repositories once required users to first provide academic or other professional credentials. Such previously restrictive policies, she acknowledges, might still be reflected in attitudes of elitism and gatekeeping on the part of a few archivists.

Luckily, this mindset is clearly dying. The essays of College and University Archives all explore how archivists have since reversed course and seek to promote their services to greater audiences, collaborate with other departments and even outside organizations, streamline processing so that more collections are available, and develop a more user-friendly web presence. Although some authors wrote from the perspective of a research institution (for example, discussions on the preservation of raw data, guidelines on accepting faculty research collections, and copyright restrictions on manuscript collections), I still found most of the essays applicable to my position at a small teaching college, especially the ones on oral histories and documenting diverse populations. But if there is one major challenge we all face, it is the explosive growth of born-digital materials and the special concerns of digital preservation, which involves inserting ourselves into the records management process to ensure they're not simply deleted or overwritten.

Though not super in-depth, College and University Archives provides a worthwhile window into the continued evolution of a particular subset of archives, with ideas that may work for other types of institutional repositories (such as corporate archives) as well.