The Digital Archives
Here’s a question: When was the last time you visited the Digital Archives in the Special Collections link on the University of Detroit Mercy Libraries/Instructional Design Studio’s Research portal? If it’s been a while, “now” might be a good time to revisit.
Digital archives are a valuable resource. Digitized items are more accessible to researchers than non-digitized materials, and digitized documents and images can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Using this resources helps students and researches save time and reduce or eliminate the need to visit the library and/or spend time pouring through hard copy originals.
The digitized material in the library’s Special Collections is the result of dedication to and preservation of the transitory things in this world. Paper breaks down over time; photographs dim and disappear over the years. Even objects like clothing, medals, and trophies have a “shelf life” if left sitting for too long. What lasts a lifetime, however, is the value we place on these items, these links to the past, and preserving a digitized image of these items is one shareable way of reconnecting with what has gone before.
UDM’s Libraries and Instructional Design Studio is committed to preserving knowledge and learning, and part of this involves preserving the knowledge of the past through digital capture and storage. And we offer access of this to you, our students and readers everywhere, in an effort to share how we got from then to now. We learn from the past by repeating our successes and avoiding repeating our failures. There is value in this and UDM is there to work to maintain that value by incorporating scanning and archiving technology.
We invite you to visit and experience something of our past.
