Welcome!
Have you ever wondered why your student organization was started? What inspired it? Who were the founding members? What was their first event, tournament, or outing?
By preserving the historical records of your student organization, you can help answer those questions and ensure that people in the future are never answered with a shrug and "I have no idea!" when they ask the same questions.
This toolkit is to help your group organize and preserve your papers. It provides some basic archival tips to make sure that your history will survive past that last group meeting or away game.
If you like the sound of this, but don't have a good place to store your materials or just don't want the task of organizing and preserving your items, then maybe donating them to the University Archives, located in the Nabb Center on the 4th floor of the Guerreri Academic Commons, is the option for you! For more information on donating, see our Donation tab.
The toolkit is here to help you make sense of it all, but if you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me, the one in the picture on the bottom right, your University Archivist! I am here to help you keep your documents, photographs, emails, correspondence, founding documents and any other materials safe and sound throughout time.
Happy archiving!
Why you should preserve your records
Archival records contain informational value and document the events and actions of a student organization. Without these records, important information and memories can be lost to a change in leadership, graduating participants, mismanaged paperwork, or just time itself.
Since students are only at SU for a limited time, it is important to have a system for preserving and transferring your organization's materials to future members. Without one, it may be hard to understand the history of your group or create more work for current members in keeping all their paperwork tidy within the organization and with SU.
Use this toolkit to help you create a system that works for YOUR organization, whether that is physical organization, creating a digital filing system, or donating your organization's materials to the University Archives.
When you should preserve your records
NOW!
As the old proverb says:
"No time like the present, a thousand unforeseen circumstances may interrupt you at a future time."
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