Archives are not infallible. Paper disintegrates, photos acidify, and even metal rusts and ages. Every librarian and archivist knows that preservation relies on prevention far more than restoration, but there is only so much control you can exert over nature’s most significant force: time.
As a joint Library Science and Digital Humanities student, I am particularly interested in how libraries and archives can use digital resources to preserve aging materials. As a staff member at Cornell College’s Cole Library, I hope to create tools to support the research endeavors of Cornell’s students and faculty.
For my Public Digital Humanities Certificate capstone, I will be working with Professor Kirilka Stavreva and the Cornell English Department to create and populate a digital archive with materials pertaining to the literary heritage of Mount Vernon and the surrounding areas. The materials I will be working with are physical items that belong to the Cornell Archive and have already been identified and digitized by English Senior Seminar students.
Using Preservica, a content management and digital preservation system, I will create an archive that can host the digital materials. The next step involves creating a controlled tag vocabulary and consistent metadata guidelines. The controlled tag vocabulary will be helpful when looking for specific items, allowing for easier searching. At the same time, the metadata will provide necessary details about the provenance and subject material of the assets. By creating a digital archive, these materials will be more easily accessible to students, the public, and anyone who may be interested in Iowa’s literary history.
The second part of my project involves creating a Google Site that will host faculty research, student research, and other relevant literary discourse. In the English Senior Seminar, students conduct in-depth research on materials from the Cornell Archives. They work in groups to analyze the chosen materials and create an informative website that showcases their findings and insights. However, since these websites are solely hosted by students, there is a high risk of deletion.
Where Preservica will be used to host purely archival assets, the Google Site will host the research and analysis created by the students. By migrating the information to an institutionally supported and maintained site, these projects will be more easily accessible and able to exist securely for much longer.
Although this project is my capstone, it is intended to be used in perpetuity. As such, I will train other students and staff on how to manage and maintain the archives after my involvement has ended. It is my hope that these two sites will allow these materials to be preserved and used for as long as they are needed.