This article reports on the archival implications of the 2006 Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States¹ and follow-up interviews with the developers of institutional repositories in selected colleges and universities. The findings indicate that archivists generally play a quiet but persistent role in institutional repositories, and archival and special collections materials are a major source of content in institutional repositories. Institutional repositories (IRs) are becoming an extension of the institutional repository (archives). Still, a great deal of uncertainty surrounds preservation in IRs, and a potential, albeit currently unfilled, role for the archivist exists in providing digital preservation expertise for the IR.

The single-family population schedule for the Eleventh Census of the United States taken in 1890 was significantly more voluminous and vulnerable than its predecessors. Recordkeepers at the time failed to copy the schedules or to bind them, driven both by the era's pervasive fiscal conservatism and bureaucratic hubris over the first use of the Hollerith electrical tabulating machines. Thus the stage was set for the infamous fire of 10 January 1921. The loss of a large portion of the 1890 census did not, as previously assumed, spur the creation of the National Archives. Nevertheless, the impact of the fire and subsequent disposal of the remnants of the census left a permanent void in the historical record.

Documentation strategy emerged in the 1980s as a proactive, collaborative alternative to passive acquisition. Difficulties implementing geographically based projects followed early successes with projects at the American Institute of Physics. By 1996, many archivists dismissed this approach as impractical and never evaluated documentation strategy in the light of digital affordances and challenges. This article analyzes and identifies strengths and weaknesses of five fully implemented documentation strategy projects, including two in the electronic environment. It identifies parameters within which documentation strategy can be effectively implemented and provides thinking points for using this approach in the digital age.

Ten years ago the authors published the results of their work to create a comprehensive descriptive framework for the historical documentation of the Holy See primarily housed in repositories within Vatican City. The Archivio Segreto Vaticano is the most important of these repositories, and descriptions of its holdings form the bulk of the publication. This article revisits this project ten years after publication to assess its contribution and the extent to which work at the various Vatican repositories has improved on the work done by the Michigan team. This retrospective explores issues relating to the limits of information technology, the complications of joint projects, the role of scholars in the descriptive process, and the need for conceptual frameworks in digital-based description.

This essay examines the contemporary restoration of legacy moving images. It argues that new technologies of restoration confront the archival profession with the need to reassess traditional methodologies and to articulate new theoretical frameworks. It introduces a range of conceptual problems including the nature and status of archival materials that require restoration and reconstitution, the desire to return moving images to their original states, and the differences between object-oriented and time- or event-oriented knowledge systems. A case study discusses three distinct archival representations of Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial Concert in 1939, which are symptomatic of a major shift within the moving image archival field. The paper suggests that the UCLA Film and Television Archive's experimental treatment of its archival footage of this historic concert represents an exemplary departure from the field's traditional and doctrinaire orientation toward neutrality and cautiousness. In addition to their previous role as custodians of legacy materials, archivists have now also begun to operate more openly as historical agents to fill in historical gaps by producing new works.

Eleven years after the release of Encoded Archival Description (EAD), archivists' reactions to it range from wholehearted acceptance to outright rejection. In the middle of this spectrum are archivists who decide to implement EAD but encounter obstacles in doing so. This paper reports the findings of a survey of sixteen such cases. It identifies barriers to implementation such as lack of staff and a gap between the technology needed to publish EAD and the skills of many archivists. It discusses solutions and recommends changing the emphasis of EAD training, using server-friendly software, and engaging consultants to bolster archivists' technology expertise.

This paper explores archival instruction at the Bentley Historical Library and students' archival research activities over one semester. It examines the roles of the class instructor and reference archivist in instructing students in critical and contextual thinking in the archival research setting. The paper also investigates the specific needs of students in an archival setting, the skills they require, and their responses to archival research. The findings suggest methods class instructors and reference archivists can use to improve archival research classes to serve the needs of students. A suggested model of archival and student research activities depicts visually the process of student archival research activities, incorporating the forms of knowledge and skills that students need at different stages of the research process, as well as archivists' roles in these stages.

This paper reports on an exploratory study that assessed the impact of four orientation sessions given by an archivist in the Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives (MSSA). The paper reviews the literature on the use of primary sources in the classroom, archival orientation sessions, and the impact of archival services. It outlines the methodology used in this study, discusses the findings, and concludes with suggestions for future research.

This paper considers similarities and differences among the concepts of digital curation, digital archives, and digital libraries. It argues that, from a recordkeeping perspective, the phrase digital archive has been misused, even hijacked, and that this misuse obscures fundamental issues associated with the capture and long-term management of archival resources. The paper also argues that digital archiving requires active archival intervention across the entire records continuum, and that, as such, the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model is deficient because it ignores the need for pre-ingest archival activity. The paper reviews the digital archiving experiences of the National Archives of Australia (NAA), in light of the key messages outlined in the first half of the paper placing those endeavors in the broader Australasian context. These experiences include the NAA's efforts to promote and facilitate improvements in government recordkeeping, the NAA's digital preservation project, and the wider challenges of implementing total "end-to-end" digital archiving in an institution already struggling to fund its more traditional activities. It identifies the major challenges that still require resolution, such as securing access to the various skills and capabilities required for digital curation, Australian style. The paper concludes with thoughts on the skills and capabilities needed to deliver total digital archiving outcomes.

The increasing scope and duration of copyright protection have had a noticeable impact on archive-based scholarship. More than a few literary estates have hampered scholars' efforts to quote from important documents freely accessible to the public in libraries but not fully usable in published scholarship due to copyright restraints. This paper tells the story of one scholar who fought back by suing the Estate of James Joyce for a judicial declaration that what she planned to do with archival materials was fair use and what the Joyce Estate had been doing to interfere with scholarship was copyright misuse.