An oral history is a recorded audio or video interview in question-and-answer format.
An oral history project is a series of oral history interviews focused on documenting a topic, theme, era, place, organization, event, or group of people.
Archives have long been viewed as bastions of memory, preservation, and historical accountability. However, archivists must confront ethical questions in an era of digital surveillance, data harvesting, and global information flows.
As archival institutions evolve from custodians of information to facilitators of memory and meaning-making, emotional engagement has become a vital, though often overlooked, dimension of archival design.
Archival reading rooms have long been the centerpiece of public access to collections. They are where researchers engage with historical documents, where discovery becomes tangible, and where the institutional identity of an archives is most visibly embodied.
Archival discovery tools, such as catalogs, finding aids, search interfaces, and digital repositories, are often the first point of contact between users and collections. These tools serve as maps and compasses, guiding users through vast and often complex holdings.
Design thinking has become a widely adopted approach in fields ranging from technology to education, prized for emphasizing empathy, experimentation, and iterative problem-solving. For archives, traditionally shaped around internal workflows and professional conventions, design thinking presents an opportunity to reimagine outreach and engagement strategies from users’ perspectives.
Records are essential to every organization. Records can be in any form, including physical documents and electronic files.
Proper management and organization of records is crucial for any organization to function smoothly. Records provide evidence of the organization’s activities and help staff make informed decisions.
Many archival repositories have invested in digitization projects to enhance access to their collections.
Archives have been particularly interested in infrastructure projects for several years. Repositories have also participated in collective efforts to test and disseminate tools, procedures, and methodologies.
Plagiarism is the practice of falsely representing as one’s own any language, thoughts, ideas, designs, or expression in a paper, exam, or other work. In short, it means taking someone’s else’s words, ideas, or work and passing them off as yours. There are severe consequences for plagiarism in your academic, work, and personal lives.
When you're conducting research online, it may be difficult to determine if a website contains credible information. Almost anyone can publish anything online, which provides a wealth of information for scholars and students. However, the ease of publication may promote information which is false, faulty, or misleading.
Digitization has changed how collections are used and accessed.
Research can make digital surrogates more amendable to interpretation, such as via full-text searching and indexing, as well as comparison of materials for multiple sources. Nonetheless, there may be times when no digital surrogate is adequate for scholarship. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate whether digitization is worthwhile before undertaking an initiative. Many factors come into play when assessing the value of digital files. These factors may help access when digitizing collections can be cost-effective. Valuable digital resources, which bring prestige to the institutions that create and maintain them, are those that support scholarship without losing the benefits of working with the originals.