IU (Indiana University) is Safeguard For America’s Black History

From an Indiana University Libraries Bloomington Post:

Personal papers and recordings from both well-known and unsung African Americans are being digitally preserved at IU, under an agreement between IU Libraries, University Information Technology Services (UITS) and The HistoryMakers, a national non-profit organization that has grown to be the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, and is dedicated to documenting African American life, history and culture.“We’re doing this as part of IU’s mission,” said Jon Dunn, assistant dean for Library Technologies for IU Libraries. “The great thing about this partnership is we are able to leverage the investments IU already has made in library and information technology infrastructure to help support our mission of preserving knowledge more broadly.”

The recent agreement means IU’s Scholarly Data Archive, operated by UITS, is serving as a 3rd copy backup digital storage facility for the digitized personal papers, photographs, videos, and sound recordings of African American people whose lives The HistoryMakers is documenting. Some digitized data already have been transferred and others will follow, as The HistoryMakers digitizes more collections.

“In the digital world, when you have works of art and collections that are deemed important, you want a couple copies of them,” said Matt Link, associate vice president for UITS Research Technologies. “In the eyes of The HistoryMakers, those data are priceless.” He said providing digital storage space is not a lot of work and IU’s digital infrastructure, including research storage, is substantial. “It falls under the category of the right thing to do,” he said.

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