Indiana University s Library focusing on the Online Archive Kelsey Bawel

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1 Administrative Aspects Indiana University s Library focusing on the Online Archive Kelsey Bawel Indiana University s Archive and Records Management digital library meant to collect, organize, make accessible, and preserve records documenting Indiana University s origins, development, and activities of associated persons. Its mission and goal is to provide overall direction for developing and implementing a records management strategy that will effectively and systematically manage records throughout their entire life cycle. The archive library serves the Indiana University faculty, students, alumni, staff, and benefactors with the most likely users being students or those looking for IU records. The IU libraries have many different librarians and staff, but Dina Kellams is the director of Wells Library and the University Archives. The main collection, the Archive s Digital Photograph Collection, is managed almost exclusively by Brad Cook. Other contributors include Rachel Hancock, Carrie Schwier, and Kate Cruikshank. These are the people who curate the digital collection is such a way as to promote the use of objects, but these librarians do not directly impose their ideas on the material through comments or reviews as Nikki Robertson suggests they should in Content Curation and the School Library (Robertson, 2012). Affiliate institutes and partnerships are all IU Libraries (which are numerous). The only other partnership mentioned is that of the Indiana Magazine of History. This magazine is affiliated with Indiana University and published articles about Indiana s history (as the name implies). The Archives is supported by Indiana University and the IU Foundation, which receives funds from alumni and benefactors. The project is sustainable as Indiana University is a well-established institution and has had an online presence since 1987.

2 Collection Content Indiana University s Archive does have their collection policy provided on their website. The Collection Policy addresses many of the key issues as identified by Sharon Johnson such as content, vendor support, access concerns, and legal issues and also states that the scope of the collection includes records relating to the history and culture of Indiana University that have long-term, indefinite administrative, legal, fiscal or historical value (Johnson, 2012). The majority of the records collected by the Archives are generated by University administrative units and academic departments and document

3 the process of administering and managing the University. Another prominent but less voluminous source of records collected by the Archives are the records generated by faculty, student and alumni organizations. The Archives also collects records that are about the University and members of the IU community, even if the creator of these documents is not associated with IU. Finally, the Archives collects on a selective basis the personal papers of prominent IU faculty and alumni. This collection is mainly paper records (governance and policies, financial records, biographical information, publications, etc.) and photographs. While IU Libraries uses many subscription serves such as JSTOR and EBSCO, the Archives relies mainly on donations and school generated materials to make up the collection. Information Organization Content within the IU Archive is organized mainly by collection. For example the Archive Photographs are a collection, then there are the Charles W. Custman Photographs, Student Life at IU, etc. Within the Digital Photograph Collection images can be browsed by things like Personal Name, Place, and City. Metadata is extensive and well thought out. If it is possible to name a person is the photograph it is done, a description is given, title, topics that the photograph relates to are named, as well as location the photograph was taken. For images that were not born digital there is an image number that allows the archivist to locate the physical location of that photograph. While they do not explicitly use Dublin Core, many of the metadata fields and standards are very similar. The library completes Southwick s and Skoric s three principles of metadata: 1) conforms to community standards 2) interoperability 3) authority control and content standards for description (Southwick, 2013). For organization, the archive uses categories as well as controlled vocabulary and a glossary (in the case of the library portion). Collection descriptions in Archives Online at IU are encoded according to the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format.

4 Collection Storage and Preservation

5 The IU Online Archives houses both digitized material and digitally born materials. In the case of digitized artifacts, the origins are preserved by the assigning of a unique image number that informs archivists where the physical location of that image. Most images seem to be high resolution JPEGs that can be saved straight to a personal computer. As pointed out by Marwa El Sahn, part of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLS), digitization opens a whole new perspective to millions who have access to the internet. Indiana University stays up to speed with new technology and an entire Digitization Lab (El Sahn, 2013). The open Lab provides large format flatbed, high speed, transparency-capable, and sheet-fed scanners for textual documents (bound, loose-leaf, manuscript, etc.), photographs, negatives, and small to medium three-dimensional objects. Collection Access Access is a hot topic in library circles today. Because it is something that every digital library and collection must deal with, there are many diverse options in terms of software and platforms (Armes, 2014). The IU library embodies this by using different software depending on the format of the digital items they are preserving/providing access to. Images: Image Collections Online (ICO, is a web application that provides access to IU collections of digital images. It has a back end component known as Photocat, which is used to manage uploading and describing images and managing image collections. Images are stored in their instance of Fedora ( and ICO delivers them from there. They essentially built ICO themselves and it launched in Audio and Video: Avalon ( is the software behind Media Collections Online ( which stores audio and video in Fedora. There are other instances of Avalon at IU (Kelley has at least one running). The software was collaboratively developed between IU and Northwestern University and is open source. It should also be noted that with both of these services, the master files are exported to and stored in cold storage. The library has other services and platforms for managing additional kinds of content (the IUScholarWorks institutional repository, the IU Digital Library of digitized books, Archives Online, our electronic text services, etc.). While there is no privacy policy listed for the archives or the linked collections, IU carries a strict privacy policy contract with all of its vendors who have access to personal or sensitive information.

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7 Technical and Service Aspects The archive does have an access policy in place that allows anyone to access the collection with the exception of certain restricted collections. There are five main rules for accessing the physical collection: 1. Books, briefcases, packages, coats and hats must be left in Archives lockers before the researcher begins work. 2. Food or beverages are not allowed in the department; smoking is prohibited. 3. The use of any kind of pen is prohibited in the Reading Room. Pencils alone should be used. 4. All materials must be handled with great care. Researchers must not lean on materials or trace, write on or fold records or handle them in any way likely to damage them. 5. Researchers will maintain the documents in the order they are received. The digital collection can be searched by anyone and the system works properly. While everyone with an internet connection can access the collection, all materials in the collection are protected by copyright. A user must gain permission from the library and then use a citation (that is given) to credit IU with the collection. The library makes it very clear that they own the copyright, and that access to the material is not permission to publish the material. Frequently talked about in the library world are budgets and budget cuts. Spending must go down and sometimes this is at the cost of services, both technical and customer. IU combats this by having a strong online presence of ready information in the hopes that these online services will help answer questions before they get to the librarian (Cleary, 2015). The Archive has services available such as transferring records, instructional services, retention and disposition schedules, FAQs, chat with a librarian, a librarian, and even text a librarian. The website also lists staff members and their contact information for questions that are more subject specific.

8 Bibliography (6 references) Arms, Caroline (2014). Enabling Access in Digital Libraries: Issues Affecting User Acceptance. Council on Library and Information Resources. Cleary, Robert (2015). The Commitment Problem : Spending to Zero to Maximize the Efficiency of the Collections Budget. Association for Library Collections and Technical Services.

9 El Sahn, Marwa (October 2013). Guidelines for Digitization Projects for collections and holdings in the public domain. International Federation of Library Associations. Johnson, Sharon (August 2012). Key Issues for E-Resource Collection Development: A Guide for Libraries. International Federation of Library Association and Institutions. Robertson, Nikki D. (2012). Content curation and the school library. Knowledge Quest. Southwick, Silvia B. & Skoric, Jane (2013). Metadata into Practice. In, J. Monson, LITA Guide: Jump-Start Your Career as a Digital Librarian, American Library Association