2014 ACM History Committee Archiving Workshop

The ACM History Committee”s archiving workshop met for two days at the University of Minnesota”s Andersen Library, with Charles Babbage Institute archivist-curator R. Arvid Nelsen leading the sessions. The workshop brought together a diverse group of people from computer science, libraries, archives, national laboratories, and museums. Hands-on exercises, lectures, discussions, tours, and social time contributed to the workshop”s success in disseminating professional knowledge about archival policies and procedures to the ACM members and other attendees. Focused discussion of attendees” own archiving projects highlighted the importance of archival “users” in forming archival collections. Examination of digital archiving practices (at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere) led workshop members to consider similarities and differences between traditional paper and born-digital archiving. Software tools for archiving (including Greenstone, Omeka, Collective Access, and others) were discussed. Among the workshop”s outcomes, in addition to re-doubled emphasis on the centrality of ACM SIG activities, were three specific recommendations for the ACM History Committee [see here]. See here for a list of workshop participants and the workshop schedule. (Arvid Nelsen”s post on the Libraries” blog Primary Sourcery is posted here.) The HTML version of the workshop report can be found here, and the PDF version of the workshop report can be found here.