To celebrate the IU Bicentennial we wanted to share some exciting updates about both on-going and new IU East Archives projects!
Media Collections Online
First, all the audio-visual material that was housed in the archives and sent to Bloomington for the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI Project) are now back and they have been digitized. We are working on moving them into IU’s Media Collection Online (MCO), which is the campus wide platform for all of IU’s digitized AV material. We are building collections and pushing them from Dark Avalon, which is a read-only, restricted access site to MCO. If you know we have something in the archives, such as a Starr Gennett recording or an oral history interview about the 1968 Richmond Explosion, and it’s not available yet in MCO, just contact IU East Archivist Beth South at eabrockm@iue.edu and we can set you up quickly with access. You can access Media Collections Online here at https://media.dlib.indiana.edu/. While a lot of our AV material has been digitized, this project is not over. We have most of our older formats digitized (VHS, 45’s and 78’s, betacam, various mm of film, eight track tapes, u-matics, laserdiscs, etc.), but we still have our DVDs from the Athletics Department to ship out, so processing those will be happening in the near future.
Student Newspaper Collection Digitization
Another project that is moving forward is the digitization of our Student Newspaper collection. Starting in just a couple of weeks, the regionals will be working on inventorying their student newspaper collections and shipping them to Bloomington. Currently, this project is focusing on the regional campuses and not the Bloomington campus. We support from IU Bicentennial funds, we have hired Arianna Cook, an IU East Alum and current Information and Library Science student at IUPUI, to help us with this project. Arianna will go through our newspaper collection, record bibliographic information, such as number of pages, sizes of the paper, number of volume and issues, if there are any colored pages, and if they are bound or loose. She will also assist with packaging them safely with the appropriate materials for shipping. Beth and Arianna will be provided with specialized training by Doug Sanders, Paper Conservator in the IUB Libraries’ Preservation department. This project should be completed by June of 2020, but the papers will become available as soon as they pass quality control after being digitized. So, we expect to have the IU East’s Student Newspaper Collection available online much sooner.
Figure 1 Arianna Cook
IU East Campus History Course & a Presentation on the Online, Interactive Faculty Exhibit Book
The IU East Campus History course, a free online course about the history and development of the Indiana University East Campus, continues to be available via Expand IU. The course was created in the summer of 2017 by IU East archivist Beth South and IU Bicentennial Intern (and now IU East alum) Hannah Castor. Using material from the archives, those who enroll will be able to access primary documents, photographs, and even oral histories to learn about the campus’ history, as well as the faculty and students who worked at and attended IU East. The course is free and open to the public and is available online at https://expand.iu.edu/browse/iuheritage/courses/iuehistory.
The course also features a section on our past and current faculty and contains a link to an exhibit book created by Beth South with the open source authoring and publishing platform Scalar. Beth will present the project, “The Online, Interactive Exhibit Book: Using Scalar to Highlight Faculty Content in the Archives” at the annual meeting of the Kentucky Council on Archives. Scalar enables creation of a digital book containing photos, oral histories, news articles, and research. The talk will provide an overview of Scalar, a rationale for the project, and the challenges and benefits of using the platform.
Figure 2 Homepage of IU East Faculty ebook
Bicentennial Oral History Project
Another ongoing effort is the Bicentennial Oral History Project. We are still seeking IU East alumni, retired staff, and faculty to participate and tell their stories. Most interviews are about 30 minutes long and there is a list of guided questions that can be shared beforehand to allow those interested to prepare. Oral histories are being gathered across all the IU campuses and they will eventually be available online later this fall with the rollout of a new oral history discovery platform. If you would like to share your story, please fill out the form here https://200.iu.edu/signature-projects/oral-history/form.html and select “share my story.”
LGBTQ+ Archive Collection: Seeking Oral Histories
A new collection that the archives recently unveiled, alongside Dr. Rountree’s Eng-W270 class, is the LGBTQ+ Archive Collection. The students of Eng-W270 started the collection this past spring semester, collecting news articles and interviews from members of the local LGBTQ+ community. We plan to expand the collection with more oral histories and interviews. If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community from Richmond or the surrounding areas and are interested in sharing your experiences with us, please contact Beth to set up an interview. You can view the LGBTQ+ Collection online at https://iu.pressbooks.pub/eastlgbtqarchive/.
As always, if you have any questions related to these projects or anything archives related, you can contact IU East Archivist Beth South at eabrockm@iue.edu. For any questions about research or accessing our databases, just Ask Us! iueref@iue.edu.