Submitted by Cassie McClure, NMSU Library Communications Specialist
Digital Archiving
If the estimated 90 percent of all new information is born digital, and everyday new digital materials are created, what can libraries do to help users manage their personal digital materials? New Mexico State University Library’s Digital Projects Librarian Nathan Brown’s article in D-Lib Magazine explores resources and methods which could be used in the development of a personal digital archiving workshop and how to best tailor it to a library audience.
“I’ve been interested in personal digital archiving and personal digital collections for several years now,” said Brown. “I think it is a very important topic that gets overlooked, because many of us simply don’t think about it – but the danger of losing valuable digital materials is very real and something to which we should pay more attention.”
Brown advocates for libraries to develop personal digital archiving workshops which teaches patrons to identify their digital material, determine what can be kept and what can be let go, creating a file naming system, how to back up their files in different locations for preservation purposes, and to examine the files again to make sure the material is still available to be read on current devices, and when to upgrade the files to newer technology.
D-Lib Magazine is an electronic publication with a focus on digital library research and development, including new technologies, applications, and contextual social and economic issues. For those interested in reading Brown’s complete article, please go to the D-Lib Magazine online: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may15/brown/05brown.html
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New Mexico History Conference
After digging around in dusty, forgotten corners, archivists are able to find previously unknown aspects to their holdings which can be brought to light for researchers around the world. On Saturday, May 9, three archivists from the New Mexico State University Library presented at the 2015 New Mexico History Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Their presentation, “Bombshells, Real and Political: Adventures in Archiving at New Mexico State University”, sought to highlight different little known portions of the institutional, regional political units of the New Mexico State University Archives.
Caitlin Wells, Assistant Professor and Archivist for the Rio Grande Historical Collections, discussed her assessment activities in the archival collections and spoke about the de Bremond Collection. De Bremond was a prosperous farmer and sheep rancher from Roswell, New Mexico who was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the New Mexico National Guard Battery A in 1910.
Adam Heien, Assistant Professor and Archivist for the Political Papers Archives, presented on Thomas Gayle Morris who represented the state of New Mexico in Washington as an at-large Congressman from 1959 until 1969. Morris advocated for many of the same New Mexico causes that Senator Pete V. Domenici worked for during his political career in Washington, D.C. Morris was defeated in 1968 by Manuel Lujan, Jr. in a bid to represent the newly-created 1st Congressional District. The Thomas G. Morris papers are fully processed and available to researchers.
Martha Shipman Andrews, Associate Professor and University Archivist, discussed the careers of some of NMSU’s past presidents whose presence and careers here in New Mexico are largely unknown. Her discussion included one famous ex-president, Hugh Milton, who encountered real, not figurative, bombshells on the Pacific Islands of World War II.
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McKee Foundation Grant
Recognizing that scholarly literature is a necessary and valuable research tool, the Robert E. and Evelyn McKee Foundation has awarded the New Mexico State University Library the 2015 McKee Foundation grant of $15,000. The award allows the NMSU Library to purchase the entire contents of ENGnetBASE, which consists of over 3,000 e-book titles covering civil, electrical, industrial, mechanical and mining engineering subject areas.
This digital library is readable over any device including mobile phones, through its app, allowing our students to access these resources 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not only will users be able to access the 3,000+ e-book titles, but at the end of one year, the titles that received the most use will be permanent additions to the NMSU Library collections.
The Robert E. and Evelyn McKee Foundation has generously supported the Library since 1995. Robert E. McKee is remembered as the “master builder” whose company, McKee General Contractors, constructed seven buildings on the NMSU campus. For more information, please contact Project Director Paula Johnson at paulacj@lib.nmsu.edu or (575) 646-7251.