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Global Goal

BORN DIGITAL AND THE BUSINESS OF PERMANENCE

BY SAMMIE MORRIS

Sammie MorrisI once heard an archivist say that the reason so many archivists worry about digital content is because archivists are “in the business of permanence, and digital isn’t permanent." Although this may seem a bit cynical, there is no doubt that the issue of managing and preserving digital content offers great challenges — as well as great opportunities — for the profession. The resulting worries borne from those challenges stem from the high level of dedication many archivists feel towards fulfilling our responsibilities for preserving important, unique digital content indefinitely, so that it can continue to be used by future generations.

Just last week, I spoke on the phone with an alumnus who was the editor of a 1960s volume of the Debris (Purdue University’s now defunct yearbook). He and a group of fellow Debris editors had come together recently to reminisce, and they were very troubled by the demise of the yearbook. They felt something had to be done to continue to document student life on an annual basis; after all, how would alumni in the future remember their college years in a meaningful way without a yearbook? How would they look up the name of that classmate they wanted to reconnect with, or confirm the date for when that new tradition their class started first came into existence?

I completely sympathized with their concerns. In the Archives and Special Collections, we use the yearbooks on a daily basis to answer reference questions about when a certain person was a student, what clubs and organizations they were involved with, what their majors were, and, most often, to provide photographs of students, organizations and faculty. Many of these requests come from alumni and their families, but many also come from researchers creating biographical articles or documentary films on noteworthy alumni. Faculty from Purdue as well as other institutions writing about trends in higher education, the history of land grant universities, and social and political events during certain eras seek to understand how events such as wars and civil rights movements affected campus life. These researchers have found the Debris a critical source for this information. A fair number of requests come from the University Development Office when seeking to write persuasive funding proposals to alumni and their descendants, and even the President’s Office requests information on past classes that can only be answered from the yearbook when gathering content for commencement speeches on how student life has changed from, say, 100 years ago.

In addition to the yearbook, two of the most critical sources on University history are the course catalogs and the Board of Trustees minutes. These sources are used most frequently by faculty and historians seeking to demonstrate the growth, evolution and accomplishments of Purdue, whether it is the university as a whole or the history of a particular college, school or department. Finding information about the past is not a problem, with print catalogs and trustees minutes available in the Archives; however, for future historians, this could prove a challenge if we are unable to preserve the catalogs and minutes being created today, which exist only in digital form. Someone seeking to write an updated history of Purdue (as we approach our 150th anniversary) would find it impossible to include coverage of the last dozen or so years in our history, without access to preserved digital content.

So what are we doing about this? Well, there are many things. We are actively seeking out the official Purdue publications that used to appear in print format but are now web-only; we are crawling websites regularly to capture the content, especially given the ephemeral nature of most websites and how often they change or disappear. We are working actively with groups such as the Board of Trustees to make sure that the digital meeting minutes they create now are transferred regularly to the Archives. We are reaching out to donors and departments on campus to offer guidance on file formats, software and digital files management with preservation in mind. And we are proud members of the MetaArchive initiative, working as part of the cultural heritage community to maintain control over (and open access to) our most important digital content in a way that it can be accessible over time, even as file formats and software evolve or become obsolete.

Our most recent development has been as part of our membership with the California Digital Library’s Web Archiving Service (CDL-WAS). With support from the Dean of Libraries and the Provost’s Office, we joined CDL-WAS to capture at-risk but historically significant online content created by Purdue — things that typically would come to the archives in paper, but now are at risk because they only exist in digital form. This initiative had a sense of urgency as President Cordova’s retirement approached and with it the likelihood that the documentation of her presidency, almost exclusively digital, could be lost if swift action was not taken.

Webarchives page of France CordovaCarly Dearborn, Digital Preservation and Electronic Records Archivist, has led the charge to identify the University’s most significant content and begin capturing it first. In addition to the webpages documenting President Cordova’s tenure, she and her graduate student have located the university publications that now exist on departmental websites and set up crawls with the CDL-WAS. The web crawls have to be monitored for quality control, and many sites with complex content (moving images, live feeds, etc.) can only be partially captured and preserved. However, the amount of content already saved is exciting, and we are pleased to announce that Purdue’s web archive is now live! Check it out at http://webarchives.cdlib.org/a/Purdue. And if you are aware of a critical information source for Purdue University history, please let us know about it. It will go through an archival appraisal process to determine if it meets criteria for long-term preservation, and if it does you may just see it in our next crawl!

 

Goal Learning

PARRISH LIBRARY RECEIVES RECOGNITION

 

Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and EconomicsThe Business Research Guide recently ranked the 30 most impressive university business school libraries in the United States and the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics was ranked 11th among University of Illinois, Cornell University and Stanford University.

The library was named after Roland G. Parrish who donated $2 million towards the renovation of the library. Parrish, a Purdue University alumnus, earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial management in 1975 and a master’s degree in management in 1976. He is the president, CEO and owner of Parrish McDonald’s Restaurants LTD., which owns 25 McDonald’s franchises in North Texas.

The Business Research Guide referred to the Parrish Library as “state-of-the-art” due to its library, laboratory and learning commons.

For more information about the Parrish Library and the other ranked libraries view The Business Research Guide.

 

Goal Learning

ALI INFORMATION LITERACY UNCONFERENCE

BY CLARENCE MAYBEE

ALI Unconference 2014Academic Libraries of Indiana’s (ALI) Information Literacy Committee hosted the second Information Literacy UnConference on July 25, 2014. Forty-seven academic librarians at institutions across Indiana, including five from Purdue, attended the all-day event. The event was held at the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University Nature Park, in Greencastle, Indiana. This year’s UnConference focused on working with the six frames identified in the new Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education being developed by ACRL. Following an unconference model, attendees decided in the morning what topics they wanted to discuss at breakout sessions throughout the rest of the day. At the end of the day attendees wrote their reflections about the UnConference on a large sheet of paper. Some notable comments shared by attendees were:

  • Increase engagement by making students accountable to their peers
  • Teaching mechanics can (and probably should) be tied to teaching concepts
  • New idea to me of the student as participant in the history of scholarly development

More information about ALI can be found at http://academiclibrariesofindiana.org/home.

More information about this year’s UnConference (and more photos) is available at http://iub.libguides.com/ALI-ILunconference.

Members of the Unconference planning group included Clarence Maybee, Purdue University; Tiffany Hebb, DePauw University; Lisa Jarrell, Ball State and Andrea Baer, Indiana University.

 

Goal Learning

LONGEST SERVING FEMALE FIREFIGHTER DONATES ITEMS TO WOMEN'S ARCHIVES

 

Diana Hardey female firefighterDiana Hardy, one of the first female firefighters in Indiana, retired from the Purdue University Fire Department in July. She retired with 36 years of firefighting — 32 of them with Purdue.

Hardy joined the department in 1981 and celebrated 32 years with Purdue on December 1, 2013. She was the first woman and the longest serving firefighter at PUFD and she was the longest serving female firefighter in Indiana.

"It was challenging to be a woman working in a male-dominated profession," Hardy said. "I wanted to be treated fairly in the workplace and I worked hard to earn the respect of my co-workers. I found my niche and we have come to appreciate each other’s individuality. I'm proud of that."

Hardy celebrated her recent retirement where she was presented with Indiana’s Sagamore of the Wabash award and announced that she will be donating her uniform and gear to the Purdue University Libraries’ Susan Bulkeley Butler Women’s Archives.

Hardy hopes she can inspire other women to become firefighters. She loves the look on the faces of young women when they realize they could be a firefighter one day, just like her.

 

Infrastructure Goal

THANK YOU

BY CONNIE SMITH

I want to sincerely thank everyone who made donations to the Lafayette Urban Ministry Camp in honor of my recent retirement. I served as a camp counselor again this year and it was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed watching the kids taking advantage of the extra opportunities your donations helped to fund. It was extra special knowing that so many of you contributed to something that I love to do. I greatly appreciated your thoughtfulness. Thank you! — Connie

 

Infrastructure Goal

JULY SMILE AWARD

 

Amanda GillAmanda Gill's name was randomly drawn from all those who were SMILED upon in July. She received a $25 Von's Book Shop gift certificate.

All faculty, administrators and staff are invited to send a note of appreciation for a kindness or thoughtfulness given, assistance provided to or by a Libraries, Press or Copyright Office colleague.

To learn more about how to participate in our SMILE Program, please visit and bookmark this page on the Libraries Intranet: http://intranet.lib.purdue.edu/display/HR/SMILE+Program.

 

Infrastructure Goal

LIBRARIES STUDENT STAFF

 

Jasmine McCoyJasmine McCoy
Junior
Public Heath
Psychology

Q. What Library or Library Unit do you work in and what is your job?
A. Access Services (ILL) where I focus on customer service and document delivery.

Q. Where is your hometown?
A. Peoria, Illinois.

Q. What do you like most about your job at Purdue Libraries?
A. It’s a really comfortable work environment. I like that I have the opportunity to learn what others at my school are researching and learning about new things.

Q. If you could add a class to Purdue’s curriculum, what would it be?
A. Giving Back: a course that explains some of the ways individuals who earn a Purdue degree can use that to help others.

Q. Who would you like to meet and have dinner with?
A. Oprah Winfrey.

Q. What do you do for fun?
A. I really enjoy being active outside doing activities like running and hiking (I know, I should say reading). I like to look at fashion and beauty magazines in my down time.

Q. Future Plans?
A. I would love to work for a non-for-profit organization or own one of my own, focusing on improving the health and overall quality of life in any city in America.

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CONTENTS
STRATEGIC GOAL ICONS
You will notice the use of these icons before the article that are symbolic of our Libraries strategic goals.

Goal LearningLEARNING: Libraries faculty lead in information literacy and learning space implementation, research and scholarship.

Scholarly Goal SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION: Libraries facilitate and enhance the continuum of the scholarly communication process.

Global GoalGLOBAL CHALLENGES: Libraries faculty lead in international initiatives in information literacy, e-science, information access and data management and collaborate on Purdue's global initiatives.

Infrastructure GoalINFRASTRUCTURE: Libraries staff working together to enhance the users experience, raise awareness of Purdue Libraries and recognize the continued learning and successes of our knowledgeable staff.

OFF THE SHELF

New

Continuing

New Staff

  • Michael Flierl, Information Literacy Instructional Designer

To view all Purdue job postings visit the Purdue employment page. If you have additional questions, contact
Christine Abel or 49-42899.

SERVICE ANNIVERSARIES

Sue Long is celebrating 30 years at Purdue.

Mary Sego is celebrating 30 years at Purdue.

Monica Kirkwood is celebrating 15 years at Purdue.

Ralph Mickey is celebrating 10 years at Purdue.

EVENTS AND EXHIBITS

Purdue Day at the Indiana State Fair
August 8

ISS WOW Information Fair
International Students & Scholars
Week of Welcome
August 12-23
( a.m.-5 p.m.
STEW 314

Boiler Gold Rush
August 17-24

Boiler Gold Rush University Resource Fair
August 18
Noon-3 p.m.
Engineering Mall/Stadium Mall

Graduate Student Information Fair
August 22
10-11:30 a.m.
STEW 214

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

Judith M. Nixon, Suzanne M. Ward and Robert S. Freeman, “Selectors’ Perceptions of Patron-Driven Acquisitions.” In Customer-Based Collection Development: An Overview (ed. Karl Bridges), Chicago: American Library Association: 27-47, 2014.

Stephanie Wright, Amanda Whitmire, Lisa Zilinski and David Minor, “Collaboration and Tension Between Institutions and Units Providing Data Management Support.” Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology, August/September 2014, 40(6):18-21. http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-14/AugSep14_WrightEtAl.pdf

Clarence Maybee and Andrea Baer presented “Threshold Concepts: Challenges and Possibilities for Library Instruction” at the Academic Libraries of Indiana (ALI) Information Literacy Unconference, Greencastle, IN, July 25, 2014.

Chris Gibson, Ilana Stonebraker presented “Improving Instruction: Metaliteracy through Crowdsourcing in the Classroom” at the Indiana University Information Literacy Colloquium, South Bend, IN, August 1, 2014.

Clarence Maybee, Maribeth Slebodnik and Jake Carlson presented “Analyzing departmental syllabi to identify liaison opportunities for information and data literacy” at the Indiana University Libraries Information Literacy Colloquium, South Bend, IN, August 1, 2014.

LIBRARIES IN THE NEWS

Business Research Guide
30 Most Impressive University Business School Libraries
Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics

Exponent, July 28
Demolitions of Electrical Administration Building
Active Learning Center

Exponent, July 30
Indiana’s first female firefighter retires after 36 years of service
Archives and Special Collections

Purdue Today, August 1
Appointment, honors and activities
Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics

WHAT'S COOKING?

Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread
Visit the Libraries Intranet

COPY DEADLINE

Copy for the August 20 issue is due by noon, August 18. Send to tmabrown@purdue.edu

Comments and suggestions are invited. Send information to Teresa Brown/INSIDe/STEW 264, 49-47178 or tmabrown@purdue.edu

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