During the past half-century, an increasing number of American academic institutions established archives, and numerous academic archives owe their existence to efforts by dedicated historians to preserve and document their heritage. Although public interest in safeguarding heritage materials continues to grow, recent economic challenges confront…

This article discusses integrated approaches to the management and preservation of born digital photography. It examines the changing practices among photographers, and the needed relationships between the photographers using digital technology and the archivists responsible for acquiring their born digital images. Special consideration is given…

Ensuring the long-term preservation and use of born-digital and digitized records of enduring value has preoccupied archivists and their cultural heritage siblings for several decades. The professional literature of the 1980s and 1990s bemoans the challenges posed by rapid technological change (and the concomitant obsolescence of hardware and…

Over the course of the last decade, blogging has evolved from an obscure and specialized activity confined to a small group of technological enthusiasts to a popular phenomenon that has been embraced by politicians, corporate concerns, and the media. Milblogs are a relatively unknown sector of the blogosphere but are valuable informational sources…

This article establishes the level of skills and experience in preservation and conservation management using a case study methodological approach conducted in the 3 university libraries at the University of Zambia. The findings revealed that 20 (57%) of the library staff had not received formal training in preservation and conservation of library…

How have college and university-based archives and special collections fared over the past few years in the midst of an historically grim economic downturn? The authors conducted in-depth interviews with directors of 13 archival repositories at state universities and private colleges in the Appalachian region of Virginia, West Virginia, North…

Bertillon cards are underutilized resources, often regarded as the remnants of an antiquated nineteenth century police identification system. Through the application of computer search techniques, data manipulation, and outreach, not only can institutions provide their patrons access to this unique information, these collections can in turn help…

Among the multitude of preservation problems archivists and special collections curators face in their collections, arguably one of the most challenging is the preservation of historic scrapbooks. Although scrapbooks do not often comprise a large portion of collections in archives or special collections, they are critically important as research…

Preservation and conservation of library materials is an important aspect of library and information management. Their importance and necessity are more paramount in countries where resources are limited and libraries need to balance them with the needs of an ever increasing number of students hoping to use them. This article reports on the…

Recent surveys indicate that many colleges and universities have reached a pivotal moment in assessing the function and future development of their institutional repositories. Other surveys convey that archivists are participating in the development and implementation of institutional repositories at a variety of levels and have contributed to the…

The Archivists' Toolkit is a software application currently in development and designed to support the creation and management of archival information. This article summarizes the development of the application, including some of the problems the application is designed to resolve. Primary emphasis is placed on describing the application's…

The records of art conservators are important for many reasons. As people consider artwork a legacy of American culture so too will they also consider the records generated by individuals who have spent their working lives guaranteeing its long-term survival. Conservators and archival repositories need to work together to ensure that records…

Born-digital material such as archived Web sites provides unique challenges in ensuring access and preservation. This article examines some of the technical challenges involved in harvesting and managing Web archives as well as metadata strategies to provide descriptive, technical, and preservation related information about archived Web sites,…

Scrapbooks present a particularly challenging set of preservation issues to archivists. However, as an intriguing combination of diaries, photograph albums, and ephemera, their format and arrangement are an essential part of their usefulness as sources to researchers. The fascinating link between scrapbooks and quilts, evident in a brief history…

This article highlights the LSTA-grant funded California Local History Digital Resources Project (LHDRP) as a case study of a collaborative statewide program involving three primary groups: cultural heritage institutions, grant funding agencies, and digital library service providers. It explores how the infrastructure of the California Digital…