By Tate DeCarlo
Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, Archives and Special Collections in the Collins Memorial Library has been shifting digital collections materials to the online hosting platform JSTOR. Previously, archival content was spread across three platforms: Collins Memorial Library Digital Collections, Sound Ideas, and the University of Puget Sound Digital Collections – already hosted on a JSTOR forum. The consolidation of archives materials to this single, existing platform is projected to be completed by the 2024 fall semester.
Assistant Archivist Olivia Inglin offered insights into the purpose and progress of this project so far. She explained that the goal of this transition to JSTOR is to increase ease of access and avoid users having to scour three separate digital archive platforms to find material. “We have chosen to migrate all collections to JSTOR Forum to improve processes related to collection management, and to ease access for our patrons,” Inglin said in an email to The Trail. The University of Puget Sound Digital Collections has long been a publicly available resource, and will become the catch-all storage platform for all digitally archived material.
Not all archive material will be added to JSTOR. “These collections are not all of our archival collections, but a selection of digitized and born-digital content. This includes student work, faculty research, student publications (like the Trail), photograph collections, and other collections,” Inglin explains.
However, Inglin emphasized that physical archive material will remain secured, digitized or not. “Any physical materials that have been, are currently being, or will be digitized are generally retained by the Archives & Special Collections as part of our larger collections.”
This transition was motivated by the desire of staff from Archives and Special Collections and Collins Memorial Library to ensure the University of Puget Sound community is able to effectively locate, utilize, and preserve historical material. “By streamlining our digital collections management, we are better able to serve our patrons as they participate in activities related to teaching, learning, civic engagement, and diversity,” Inglin said.
Archives and Special Collections chose the University’s JSTOR archives page as the sole platform due to the convenience and widespread recognition of JSTOR as a user-friendly site. “Firstly, it is a platform that a majority of users are familiar with, and is easily navigable, and the search tool for collection searching is well built,” Inglin said. “Additionally, the functionality on the back end for collection cataloging and management are well designed and work well for our collection types,” she said.
Inglin assures that this transition will not prevent campus community members from viewing archived materials. “Student access will not be impacted throughout this transition. At a certain point, students will need to transition to accessing our digital collections on JSTOR Forum, but there should not be a period of time where the digital collections are unavailable.”