The International Archives Day.

Exhibitions, conferences, visits, debates and other events will be organized by the International Council of Archives. and many archives and archivists across the globe to promote archives and the archives profession.

The Universal Declaration of Archives recognizes the essential, unique, collective role that archives play in accountability, transparency, efficiency, protection, and preserving the memory of individuals, institutions and communities.

I would strongly encourage you to check out your local library to access this Journal. If they don’t carry the print copy, see if they subscribe to JSTOR or ProjectMUSE online resources.

One of the challenges we all face is figuring out where to put this stuff. There are a wide range of places to store electronic and paper files, but not every storage environment is a proper environment for Tufts data and records.

Not sure about where to store data and records? The Digital Collections and Archives has a resource for you. The DCA’s Storing University Records guidelines provides best practices for storing electronic and paper files and describes a range of paper and electronic storage environments that can provide appropriate solutions for your document and data storage needs. These include Tufts and cloud-based solutions for electronic files and advice for storing paper records on-site and off-site.

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice was founded in 1981 by Lois Marie Gibbs. The organization began as an information clearinghouse for environmental health issues and developed into an organization that focuses on raising awareness for environmental health concerns and assisting communities, organizations and individuals faced with environmental threats. CHEJ publishes a quarterly newsletter, Everyone’s Backyard, and works on campaigns that raise awareness of significant environmental threats to communities across the country and abroad. CHEJ works by conducting conversations with community leaders about their problems and provides advice, leadership training, education and assistance. Through this approach they are able to address a large number of environmental threats and empower communities to take action on their own.

Ms. Gibbs will be on campus this weekend to receive an honorary doctor of public service degree at Tufts’ commencement on Sunday, May 19, 2013.

Tufts Technology Services is offering “Information Protection and Management,” a half-hour webinar at 11:00am on the following days:
May 23
June 20
June 28
Click on date you want to register.

The Digital Collections and Archives will be offering two in-person training classes on managing institutional data and records on the Medford and Boston campuses. To sign up for these classes send an RSVP to Eliot Wilczek (eliot.wilczek@tufts.edu). All the classes have an enrollment limit of 20 people.

June 4, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Cabot 702, Medford Campus
Institutional Data 101 What’s the Right Thing to Do:
General strategies and recordkeeping rules at Tufts

June 11, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Cabot 702, Medford Campus
Institutional Data 102 How to do the Right Thing:
Storing, destroying, or saving records at Tufts

July 23, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Sackler 220, Boston Campus
Institutional Data 101 What’s the Right Thing to Do:
General strategies and recordkeeping rules at Tufts

July 30, 12:00-1:00pm (Bring Your Own Lunch)
Sackler 220, Boston Campus
Institutional Data 102 How to do the Right Thing:
Storing, destroying, or saving records at Tufts

And it was a truly astounding amount of work they accomplished. Here are a few stats:

• 403 new record cartons processed and sent off-site
• 502 reference questions answered
• 12,372 Engineering student folders cataloged
• 16,084 Transcripts cataloged
• 5,710 Publications in the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) collection cataloged

Sadly, the end of the school year also means that many of the students will be leaving us. We will greatly miss Mae Humiston who is graduating on May 19th. Mae has been a student employee at the DCA throughout her time at Tufts, and we can’t believe four years have already flown by! Not only is Mae an outstanding student employee, but she is an incredible human being. The staff of the DCA is so proud of her and the work she has done on campus around sustainable food production, recycling, and issues of justice and equality. We will miss her, but we know that she will continue to do so much good as she goes out into the world.

Also, graduating are several of our Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science students. Sarah Gustafson, Molly Bruce, and Erin Faulder are finishing up their library degrees this spring. The DCA has been very fortunate to be able to bring Erin on in a staff position, so we won’t be saying good-bye to her any time soon. However, Molly will be moving on to an internship in Austria and Sarah will be moving to Rhode Island by the end of the summer. CHEJ, Accion, Edward R. Murrow, the new CIDER collection management system – these are all collections and projects which could not have been undertaken without these three and as they graduate, the staff of the DCA is proud to have them as colleagues and valuable members of our profession.

Those are our graduates, but we also want to acknowledge our other student employees:

• Bridget Boyle
• Lancy Downs
• Tiffany Locke
• Elizabeth McGorty
• Misako Ono
• Lydia Puzzullo
• Tim Walsh
• Morgan VanClief
• Krista Zegura

And we would also like to acknowledge the staff working on the New Nation Votes grant project:

• Betsy Baldwin
• Mary LaBombard
• Katie MacDonald
• Luke Pomorski
• Emily Shafer
• Betsy Sherman

http://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/UDA.pdf

“Resilient Women” talks about Armenian women and the Armenian genocide, in particular the experiences of two women who inspired Joyce Van Dyke’s play ‘Deported’ first performed in Boston in 2012. The two women who were deported and eventually immigrated to the USA were friends: Elmas Sarajian, the playwrite’s grandmother, and Vartar Nazarian, the mother of Dr. Martin Deranian. Dr. Deranian taught dental history at Tufts School of Dental Medicine for 40 years and still has a dental practice in Worcester, Mass.

DCA is currently working with Dr. Deranian to obtain, among other material, his unique collection of diary-like binders which go back to his student years and which include much of his family’s history and Dr. Deranian’s consistent efforts regarding Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Researcher Philip J. Lampi and project director John B. Hench of the American Antiquarian Society

As the New Nation Votes elections portal states, Philip J. Lampi has been collecting election returns for the past 45 years. His dedication and expertise in the area of Early American Politics has aided many contemporary scholars in their research at the Society. In the past, this body of election data was thought to be impossible to collect because of the vast and unwieldy nature of the unindexed newspapers and poor record keeping in this early period. He has received several grants over the years to assist him in his collecting. Under the current NEH grant, project staff and consultants at the American Antiquarian Society, DCA, and elsewhere are working to digitize a good portion of the tens of thousands of typed and handwritten tabulations and raw source materials that Lampi has accumulated as part of his life’s work. The project website will be updated frequently to monitor progress. The available election returns are fully searchable by such key index points as year, geographical constituency, office, names of candidates, and party labels.

Lois Gibbs is an environmental activist who formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association after discovering that her entire neighborhood of Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, had been built on a toxic waste dump which also included dioxin. Against strong opposition by local, state and federal government agencies and Occidental Petroleum, the organization succeeded and President Carter issued an Emergency Declaration in October 1980 to get 833 families evacuated and Love Canal cleaned up. Lois Gibbs and the association were instrumental in the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or Superfund. Gibbs founded the Citizens’ Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, eventually Center for Health, Environment and Justice in 1980 to support and assist community groups and is its executive director. She has published about Love Canal and their efforts to get it cleaned up and a TV movie was made in called ‘Lois Gibbs: the Love Canal Story.’ Lois’ papers, as well as those of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice are held by the DCA. A new finding aid for the collection will be released in the next few weeks.