The campus archives is doing a lot to prepare for IU’s Bicentennial in 2020 and for IU East’s 50th anniversary in 2021. We have the Bicentennial Oral History project, a campus wide endeavor to collect stories from IU alumni across all the campuses, happening now and the stories we collect here at East are vital to preserving the history and culture of IU East. If you are an IU alumni, you can participate at https://200.iu.edu/signature-projects/oral-history/form.html. Make sure to select “share my story” and to choose the campus you graduated from. IU East alumni will hear from the East campus Bicentennial intern, Cassidy Clouse, or archivist, Beth South.
We also have a few other projects happening at the IU East Archives that will help make our collections more accessible and complete going forward.
Reaching Out to Campus Departments
Library director Frances Yates and archivist Beth South have also been communicating and meeting with other campus departments to discuss what type of campus materials we would like to collect and preserve at the archives. We have a lot of material in the archives, but in preparing for IU East’s 50th anniversary we hope to be consistent in collecting and documenting campus materials. Documenting IU East’s campus history is the main priority of the archives and every department is vital in that effort. We have already met with Campus Life, Athletics, Admissions, Student Support Services, Marketing and External Affairs, and Academic Support Services. You never know what is going to be of use or interest to future generations combing through the archives, so touching base with the other departments and having discussions on what best represents our campus has been informative for the archives and we are excited to build on our current collections and to add new ones in the coming years.
Indexing the Student Newspaper Collection
Starting in the fall semester of 2016, the Indiana University East Archives staff decided to focus on making our student newspaper collection more accessible to our patrons by indexing all the content. The student newspaper collection is a popular resource and one of the best ways to see how the East campus has changed over time, as it is one of the most complete collections we have documenting the history of IU East. Starting with the first issue printed in 1973 up to the present semester, our student worker, Brittany Yoder, has done an amazing job with this detail-oriented project of indexing the student newspaper. The paper has undergone several name changes over the years, from The Pioneer Press to The New Voice to The Howler, and the number of volumes and issues have decreased as time has passed. Brittany spent the fall semester diligently recording the titles of the articles, the contributors, and the photographs in each issue. This spring semester, she is currently working on a color coding system and organizing the title entries to reflect certain categories, such as athletics, awards & scholarships, IUE growth & donations, faculty & staff, and more. It is a very time consuming project, but we know this will improve our searching capabilities and save us time when looking up information for a patron. Brittany enjoys working on the project and looks forward to the future digitization of our student newspaper collections as part of an IU Bicentennial project.
Digitization of AV material
We also have our student worker, Dakota Firsich, helping us with another campus wide initiative, the digitization of audio-visual material. We have several oral history collections on cassette tape and CDs, a few Starr-Gennett records, videos of IU East commercial spots, class lectures, presentations and campus events, and even some commencement ceremonies. Dakota has pulled our av collection of video and audio cassettes, CDs, 78 records, and other older formats like betacams and u-matics to be barcoded and indexed and she is packing them up to be sent out for digitization. They will be out of the archives for only a few months and then they will be returned. We hope to have digital access to these collections in the near future.
A lot is going on within the archives here at East, but we are lucky to have a lot of help from our student workers, and with the collaboration of the IU East campus departments and our peers at IU Bloomington and the other regionals, we are making progress on the expansion and access to our archives. If you have any questions about our archives or are wanting to view what we have, you can check out our archives libguide here http://iue.libguides.com/iuearchives.
