{"id":99,"date":"2015-05-13T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/?p=99"},"modified":"2015-05-19T16:14:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T20:14:15","slug":"memoirs-and-memories-purdue-university-archives-and-special-collections-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/2015\/05\/13\/memoirs-and-memories-purdue-university-archives-and-special-collections-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoirs and Memories: Purdue University Archives and Special Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to the new blog for the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center. \u00a0We are pleased to launch this blog to increase awareness of the Archives and Special Collections, our unique collections, user-centered services, and exciting new initiatives.<\/p>\n

The Archives and Special Collections at Purdue are closely connected to the University\u2019s land grant mission and support the University\u2019s overarching goals of learning, discovery, and engagement.\u00a0 As a division of the Purdue Libraries, Archives and Special Collections contributes to the three main components of the Libraries strategic plan: learning, scholarly communication, and meeting global challenges.<\/p>\n

We live in a time of great scrutiny over the costs of higher education and the need to demonstrate the value of all parts of a university in contributing towards its mission. Libraries, archives, and special collections are no different, although it can be challenging to put a monetary value on preservation of the cultural and historical record to advance research and learning. In this first blog post I\u2019d like to provide a general overview of the ways the Archives and Special Collections division has aligned itself with the mission and goals of the Libraries.<\/p>\n

\"ASC<\/a>

Archives and Special Collections, located on the fourth floor of HSSE Library in Stewart Center.<\/p><\/div>\n

Learning: Integration of Information Literacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The faculty and staff who work in Archives and Special Collections actively contribute towards teaching and learning at Purdue. We collaborate with faculty in instructing students on how to conduct research using primary sources such as archives, manuscripts, and rare books. The archives reading room functions as an active laboratory space where students benefit from hands-on practice conducting research in a real-world research environment. Students who interact with our collections to analyze primary sources not only improve their problem-solving and critical thinking skills, they often make exciting discoveries that spark their research interests.<\/p>\n

Each year, we host\u00a0a growing number of students whose classes visit Archives and Special Collections, utilize the collections for class assignments and research papers, and, increasingly, publish their work in journals such as\u00a0<\/span>JPUR<\/em><\/a>, the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research. Our philosophy is that the archives and special collections exist to be used by students, faculty and staff, and the public, and we encourage students to come back and pursue their own independent research projects outside of class. Amazingly, many\u00a0of them do.\u00a0Several\u00a0of the students who have used the\u00a0Archives and Special Collections holdings in their assignments have been so inspired by working with original primary sources that they have made the decision\u00a0to pursue graduate degrees in library and information science, archival science, or museum studies.<\/p>\n

Scholarly Communication: Increase Access To and Use of Scholarly Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of the Libraries strategic goal of scholarly communication, Archives and Special Collections increases access to and use of unique and distinctive collections. We actively acquire manuscripts and personal papers, university archives, and rare books that support teaching and research. The collections are built strategically, in alignment with Purdue\u2019s disciplinary strengths and land grant mission. As such, the Archives and Special Collections has identified several areas of focus for the collections: the\u00a0<\/span>history of flight and space exploration<\/a>; the\u00a0<\/span>history of women in Indiana and\/or affiliated with Purdue<\/a>; the\u00a0<\/span>history of psychoactive substances research<\/a>; and Purdue University history. We are committed to making all of our collections as easy to locate and use as possible, and we do this in a variety of ways. First of all, when we acquire a collection we create an online accession record for it immediately, to allow researchers to find it as soon as possible. Secondly, we process the collection, taking steps to preserve items in the collection, arrange them, and create a finding aid or guide to the collection that enables researchers to see what is contained in the collection and if it is relevant to their research. The finding aid goes into our collections database, available online freely for anyone to find. Additionally, catalog records are created and contributed to WorldCat and the Libraries online catalog, to ensure a variety of routes for students and scholars to discover the collections.<\/p>\n

\"Primary<\/a>

Archives and Speical Collections holds numerous primary and secondary sources.<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to these traditional accessioning and processing steps, the collections are regularly brought to students and used in class assignments. Collections are rotated for exhibits, allowing visitors to benefit from viewing displays of\u00a0these rare materials. Finally, collections are increasingly being digitized, as\u00a0resources allow, to provide researchers worldwide the opportunity to use the unique special collections at Purdue to meet their research, teaching, or personal needs. This enables scholars to access our collections regardless of geographic location and without the constraints of time and expense of traveling to use the collections. We have created several\u00a0<\/span>online exhibits<\/a>, experimented with crowd sourcing the identification of photographs, and enabled users to add keywords and tags to scanned items in\u00a0<\/span>e-Archives<\/a>, our digital library. We are committed to free and open access to our collections, and to prioritizing digitization efforts to meet the areas of highest research demand.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, we are finding ways to publish materials in Archives and Special Collections to expose the collections to a wider audience. In collaboration with the Purdue University Press, we have worked to have materials in the collections used more frequently in the Press\u2019s publications, digitized and linked content to print and e-books published by the Press, and collaborated on creation of an app for the\u00a0<\/span>Spacewalker\u00a0<\/span><\/em>biography of Jerry Ross, that links to digitized videos, images, and related materials from Ross\u2019s personal papers in the Archives and Special Collections.<\/p>\n

Preservation of the cultural and historical record is a key aspect of the work we do in Archives and Special Collections, and we take that role seriously, particularly as the majority of new manuscripts, archives, and images are created digitally today. These \u201cborn digital\u201d items are inherently at risk due to the rapid obsolescence of software and file formats. Without active stewardship, many of today\u2019s digital files will be unreadable to future generations. Some of the initiatives the Archives and Special Collections staff have undertaken to preserve important digital collections include creation of\u00a0<\/span>digital preservation policies and practices<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for working with born digital manuscript collections and university records;\u00a0<\/span>web archiving<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of critical university web sites, particularly the webpages of academic units that contain university publications, reports, minutes, and related content that needs to be accessible in the future; active membership and contribution of digital collections to\u00a0<\/span>MetaArchive<\/a>; and data curation, with archivists as active partners in appraising and preserving data sets in\u00a0<\/span>PURR,<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>the University\u2019s research data repository.<\/p>\n

I hope you enjoy our blog, and that you find something in our future posts that will spark your curiosity, engage your interests, and encourage you to interact with us and our collections. Please visit our\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for more information. \u00a0If you have an idea for a future blog post, please feel free to contact us at\u00a0<\/span>spcoll@purdue.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome! Welcome to the new blog for the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center. \u00a0We are pleased to launch this blog to increase awareness of the Archives and Special Collections, our unique collections, user-centered services, and exciting new initiatives. The Archives and Special Collections at Purdue are closely connected to the University\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5916],"tags":[3863,5926,122,188,5923],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-events","tag-archives-and-special-collections","tag-global-challenges","tag-information-literacy","tag-scholarly-communication","tag-strategic-plan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8vDd5-1B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.purdue.edu\/asc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}