The Journey of an Archival Record. Part III: Digitization and Access

Connecting the Docs: True Stories from the Old North State

In this final episode of our first series for season 3, we reach the end of our journey in the life of an archival record. As you’ve been listening to the past two episodes, you may have asked yourself – but what’s the end goal? Where is all of this work – retention, scheduling, appraisal, processing, imaging – heading?

In today’s episode, Chauna Carr from the Digital Access Branch, Lauren McCoy from the Public Services Branch, and Josh Hager from the Records Description Unit discuss the end goal of everything we do at the State Archives: public access. We’ll talk about why we digitize records, how we decide what to digitize, and how to access materials that aren’t digitized – because only a fraction of our records are or ever will be digitized! Tune in to find out the answer to one of the most popular questions an archivist hears these days: why aren’t all of your records available online, and how to get help from reference archivists when they aren’t!

Sources Mentioned:

Women, Marriage, and the Law, a part of the Studies in Scarlet Project: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/women-marriage-and-the-law

Lillian Exum Clement Stafford materials are available in the Women in North Carolina 20th Century History collection: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/women-in-nc

General Assembly Session Records: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/general-assembly-session-records

Treasurer & Comptroller’s Finding Aid: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p16062coll15/id/1570/rec/1

The State Archives’ Online Catalog, DOC: https://archives.ncdcr.gov/search-catalog/search-doc

Information on Ordering Records: https://archives.ncdcr.gov/researchers/services/ordering-copies

African American Education Collection: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/african-american-education (includes records from the early 20th century Division of Negro Education)

Blog post from History for All the People about the conservation of the earliest admissions log from Dorothea Dix Hospital: https://ncarchives.wpcomstaging.com/2021/11/02/conservation-treatment-of-the-dorothea-dix-hospital-register/