Archival collections provide students and scholars with the ability to uncover original, primary source documents that impact teaching and research. Each of the Indiana University campuses house university and special collection archives eager to streamline descriptive and digitization practices for optimal discovery.
The Next Generation Archives Online (NGAO) Project consisted of developing and implementing best practices, workflows, services, and software to facilitate the management, description, digitization, digital preservation and discovery of archival and special collections for all IU campuses.
A team led by the Indiana University Libraries revamped IU’s existing Archives Online environment to meet the needs of all IU campuses through the following:
- creation of an expanded Archives Online Working Group that included stakeholders from all campuses to develop shared best practices and procedures for the description of archival collections
- implementation of an IU-wide installation of the open-source ArchivesSpace system for managing and describing archival and special collections
- contribution to the development of the open-source web application, ArcLight, for the discovery of finding aids and related digitized objects, to be implemented at IU later in 2020
- planning online exhibition capabilities to showcase archival collections
The website https://archives.iu.edu/ was launched in June 2020.