Amistad Research Center hosted a tour of fifty freshmen
students from New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). The students toured
the new exhibition gallery, talked to the reference archivist about the
Center's holdings, and walked upstairs to the processing area to view documents
from our ongoing projects. I showed the students two program
booklets from plays that were produced by O'Neal and mentioned various types of
correspondence included in his collection. The students were intrigued
and asked about saving emails and what steps are taken to save and to provide
access to audio visual materials.
Their questions made me ponder how technology in archives is
very relevant to students in the 21st century. Although I
believe both paper and electronic resources are equally important for
researchers, I question, do students or people in general, still write and send
letters to their love ones? What measures must archivists and information
professionals take to make sure that communications, either in paper or
electronic format, are saved for future access?
With a little research, I found a class on the Society of
American Archivists’ (SAA) website titled, Achieving E-mail Account
Preservation with XML that addresses the NOCCA student's email question. I am very interested in attending this course
once it becomes available – to answer their questions of course.
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