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Re: Handling press releases



I can tell you what we have done, although it may not apply to your
institution.

We have press releases from 1919-present.  We continue to collect them
(even though they are not as informative nor as frequently issued as they
were in the past).  We keep ours in chronological order.  This keeps them
in concert with the annual reports and many of our other resources, and it
was certainly far less work and less subjective than arranging them some
other way.

When we re-processed them two years ago, we considered creating an
index.  While we would love to have an index to our press releases, I
decided that this would not be the best use of our resources to do so.

My thinking was as follows:
By their nature, these press releases were used for sources in newspaper
stories.  Therefore, the indexes to newspapers that chose to cover the
story will have a chronological indication of when a story from your campus
happened.  If the releases are in chronological order, a newspaper index is
virtually an index to events on campus and to your press releases.  If your
local newspaper has a thorough index and covers your university, or if you
have an index to the student newspaper, or to a university newspaper, this
solution may work for you.  Naturally, a newspaper index would not be a
complete index to all press releases, but it would usually cover the big
stories.  You could investigate how well-indexed your university is by the
St. Louis newspapers or by any other news organizations receiving the press
releases.

Kate

______________________________________________
Kate Bowers
Processing Archivist
Harvard University Archives
Cambridge, MA 02138
voice:  (617) 495-2461
fax:    (617) 495-8011
email:  kate_bowers@harvard.edu

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