Exhibiting Collaboration

It’s the end of the summer 2015 term and Masters students in the Archives, Preservation and Records Management specialization are gathered in the University Art Gallery to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of their capstone projects. While some of these are the result of more traditional uses of archival collections to support an individual research question, some are collaborative projects organized with the cooperation of institutional collections in the region to showcase archival collections held in those institutions and provide awareness of them through innovative access to these materials. Others have created collections out of scattered digital materials created by individuals, whether associated with the University or not, which are consistent with the University Archives’ collecting goal of documenting Western Pennsylvania. Students, faculty and public representatives of the collections on display mingle in this gala public information event.

Recognizing the ephemerality of both the physical and virtual exhibitions, students have also proposed schemes for the preservation of this content, in a variety of print and electronic media through collaborations with the University Press and the Archives Service Center. Also recognizing the fragility of the original materials, students have worked within the grant-funded budget allocated to the capstone projects to identify and contract for appropriate conservation measures ranging from item-level restoration to rehousing in order to retain selected items in their original formats.

In these collaborative projects, students have worked through the realities of long-term access and preservation, determining selection criteria, negotiating with rightsholders about the terms of access, and writing specifications for the information systems to manage this content. Internal collaborations, particularly with students and instructors in the Information System Management specialization, have helped to identify possible infrastructures and specific applications to support these projects. Throughout, students take responsibility for actual collections, demonstrating their grasp of the underlying theories of information management and organization.

All involved can derive satisfaction from the design and implementation of the projects. Students now have specific projects to add to their portfolio. Additional archival collections have been identified and interpreted. New opportunities have been created for the public to connect with archival collections of potential interest to them.

Bernadette Callery