Indiana University Libraries' special collections and archives portal publishes 1,000 collections
Bloomington, Ind. – Archives Online at Indiana University, a discovery portal providing access to the holdings of 12 archives and cultural institutions on the Bloomington campus and around the state, revealed its one thousandth collection in September 2014.
Archives Online at Indiana University has been supported and delivered online by Indiana University Libraries since 2005. The IU Libraries' Library Technologies division and the Digital Collections Services department are responsible for the back-end technology service.
The 1,000th collection added to Archives Online, Farano mss. II, ca. 1931-1972, consists of correspondence and writings of the poet Michel Farano of West New York, New Jersey. Craig Simpson, archivist at the Lilly Library at IU Bloomington, noted that “The Farano mss. II contains original drafts of Michel Farano's poetry as well as illuminating personal and professional correspondence between the author and George Platt Brett, Arthur Stringer, Louis Untermeyer, and other literary figures of the post-World-War-II era. Farano's papers make a lovely addition to the Lilly's distinguished manuscripts collections in literature and publishing, and we are delighted they are now more visible and accessible to researchers.”
Archives Online at Indiana University hosts descriptions of archival and special collections, specifically finding aids. A "finding aid" describes a collection and provides an inventory of the primary source materials in that collection. In addition to these descriptions, 35,000 digitized objects can also be found in Archives Online, allowing researchers to visit online and examine manuscripts, letters, and pictures associated with collections.
Archives Online hosts the findings aids of the Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management. Archivist Dina Kellams enjoys pointing researchers, students, and fellow Hoosiers to the records, papers, speeches, and correspondence of Indiana University's beloved president and chancellor, Herman B Wells. “Wells was president of the university during a time of great growth and cultural change,” Kellams said. Archives Online makes it possible to share descriptions of Wells’ personal papers, which include digitized materials relating to Wells’ work in aiding the reconstruction of the German educational system after World War II.
IU Libraries' staff provide support to institutions wishing to launch their collections in Archives Online. “We can support discovery and access for many different kinds of archival and special collections housing a variety of materials - from papers to photographs to audio and video collections,” said Julie Hardesty, librarian at Indiana University, Bloomington Libraries. “Archives Online is a terrific resource that enables scholars worldwide to discover and use our archives and special collections. We are all thrilled about our 1,000th finding aid milestone and look forward to the continued growth and expansion of our archival and special collections online!”
Repositories in Archives Online include the Indiana University Archives, the Lilly Library, Wylie House Museum, Liberian Collections, the Black Film Center/Archive, and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, among many others. Additional repositories from within Indiana University will be making even more collections available for discovery and access online in the coming months.
-Nick Homenda, Digital Projects Librarian