Documenting the University's history in a digital era: Organizing and presenting archival resources at Lingnan University

Purpose: This paper chronicles Lingnan University(Hong Kong) Library’s experience in adopting the open source archival information system, Archon, and an institutional repository(IR) platform, Digital Commons, to create a holistic system for describing, managing and preserving the University’s historical documents.Design/Methodology/Approach: By combining the strength of Archon with Digital Commons, the Library can apply proper archival encoding practice with digital publishing capability to assemble the disparate and fragmentary Lingnan historical records into a more cohesive and well-organized historical collection facilitating wider access.Findings: Both the encoding process and digital publishing efforts have broadened access to several unique and valuable Lingnan records, providing greater search capabilities and accessibility. These initial sets of processed resources have successfully attracted attention from researchers and alumni who have strong interest in consulting the records. Together Archon and Digital Commons provide an ideal platform enabling the Library to reach out to more people who may also be interested in the records and have resulted in more donations to the Archives, further enriching the collection.Research limitations: Our initial efforts have created a solid foundation that we can use to develop a comprehensive archival collection showcasing the history of Lingnan University.However, the Library will need to develop a long-term strategy to formalize University archive policy for the ongoing systematic collection of university records and the effective management of born-digital data.Practical implications: Archival or historical records no longer need to be hidden or inaccessible due to lack of appropriate finding aids and search and retrieval systems. Archon provides an organizational and descriptive framework for the Library to process archival materials and create digital finding aids instantly in compliance with international archival standards, whereas IR software such as Digital Commons offers us a digital publishing platform to present the full-text content of these records online for worldwide access. We believe that as important as it is to collect and process a university’s records for historical preservation, it is equally important to make them easily available and accessible. By exploring the possibility of adopting new tools to manage old processes, we can add value while creating visibility for materials that were once hidden and inaccessible beyond our campus.Originality/value: As the first library in greater China to adopt Archon as well as use an IR platform, Digital Commons, to process archival materials and chronicle a university’s history, Lingnan University Library introduces a new approach that blends tools and resources of both archives and libraries to present a cohesive archival collection in a new digital era.