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Special Collections: Transferring Materials

Transferring your materials to the archives

Whether you are reviewing your own papers or managing the records of a student group or an academic or administrative department on campus, your materials are part of Edgewood’s history. However, they are not just about the past. Transferring records to the Edgewood University Archives serves the future by preserving institutional memory, promoting alumni relations and fundraising, and documenting historical facts and photos to show what life at Edgewood was like during your time here. We are your partner in saving and archiving these records for posterity.

The following types of materials — either paper-based or electronic — are appropriate for transfer:

  • Correspondence (including e-mail)
  • Publications (including event flyers and posters)
  • Annual budgets and other important financial statements
  • Meeting minutes, organizational constitutions or by-laws, handbooks, policy statements
  • Organizational histories, self-studies, reports
  • Photographs, photo albums, scrapbooks
  • Audio and video recordings (either analog or digital)
  • Website articles, blog posts, and other social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, etc.)

Only records that are no longer actively in use belong in the archives. You should hang onto materials that you consult more than once a year — they may not be ready for the archives yet.

In addition, the archives generally does not preserve:

  • Receipts and other routine financial documents
  • Drafts containing only minor edits or changes
  • Notes to self, unofficial meeting notes, etc.
  • Plaques, awards, and trophies
  • More than 3 copies of most publications

Please check with us if you have other documents that don’t match these types. We can help you decide whether they belong in the archives.

Please fill out the Archives Information Request form or email LibAnswers@edgewood.edu and tell us about the items you want to transfer. We will get back to you with more specific guidelines for packing and inventorying your materials.

For physical/analog materials, we can provide archival boxes and labels to keep your records safe and organized. We will ask you to make a list of what’s inside each box and tell us when the items were created. We can’t accept loose papers or hanging folders, so please let us know if you need file folders.

What happens after you transfer your materials?

We will organize your materials in archival boxes and/or digital repositories, store them carefully for long-term preservation, and add them to our searchable online inventory so that members of the Edgewood community and outside researchers know they’re here.

Whenever you need to consult records that you’ve transferred to the archives, you can visit the library and we will bring them out for you. Please fill out the Archives Information Request form or email LibAnswers@edgewood.edu a day or two in advance so that we can have your materials ready.

If you manage records for an academic or administrative department or a student organization, please consider teaming with the archives to create a schedule that will prompt future leaders or managers to transfer new records on a recurring basis — e.g., toward the end of each academic year as graduating or retiring organization officers get ready to leave campus.