Collecting Student Life Archives
The Archives and Rare Books Library wants to ensure that we document contemporary University of Cincinnati student life. The Archives and Rare Books Library is the official home of University Archives, and collecting material of current student life is critical to preserving the diverse history of the university.
If you are the leader of a student club, organization, government, or sorority/fraternity, we want to work with you to ensure your contributions to campus life are preserved for the future.
There are three ways you can partner with University Archives. For any option you would like to pursue, you can begin by contacting the Archives and Rare Books Library:
- Allow us to archive your public-facing web and social media accounts. We will use simple tools to save archival copies of your web and social media content, and can either do one-time or periodic snapshots based on your preferences. Since this is not a formal transfer of property, but granting us permission to make copies of your public content, we only need you to indicate your willingness by contacting us.
- Donate your records to the Archives and Rare Books Library. We can take your records in any format -- paper or digital -- and will make them available as part of our publicly available research collections. An example of a donation are these recent records from Undergraduate Student Government. This requires you to sign a donation form officially transferring property to University Archives.
- Learn to preserve your own records. We recognize you may be interested in option #2, but not until after a certain period of time has passed, such as when your members have graduated. We want to make sure you have the skills to preserve your records on your own, so that we, or another archive, can easily accept them in the future. Learning simple paper or digital preservation skills will ensure that your records remain usable for the future. We can develop a fun hands-on training workshop for your group.