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Re: HELP! Adventures in Starting a New Archive!



Matt--

Ask the college to purchase a copy of _The Management of College and University Archives_, by William J. Maher (Society of American Archivists, 1992), and read it thoroughly. It should answer many of your questions. I speak from experience. I took on a position as the first archivist for the Culinary Institute of America (a four-year college) last July, and had never worked in a college archive before, and this book was extremely helpful to me. Page 59 discusses the necessity of "an authorizing document designating the archives as the institution's official repository for its records." I photocopied that information and passed it up the chain of command. Do not expect this authorization to come down immediately; although I have been assured that people are working on it, I haven't gotten anything yet. But at least I've made people aware that this is something that happens in well-regulated college archives.

Although a previous response to your question said something about not letting people give you published material, it is within the function of an archive to collect materials published by the organization for which it is an archive, as the archive is supposed to document the history of the organization, and publications help in documenting that history. I have attempted to make contact with every unit on campus that publishes materials to ask them to send me a copy as they are published.




Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
Culinary Institute of America
433 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, NY  12538-1499
(914) 451-1757
c_crawfo@culinary.edu

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