A project is in the works to create digital archives of Clark materials and publications such as art slides, issues of The Independent, and issues of The Phoenix annual art review. The project is scheduled to begin fall of 2008, if grant funds are received.
    “She (Maureen Morasch, archive librarian) is working on a grant to digitize The Independent archive,” Susie Harding, Clark library specialist said. “We discussed it in our last library management team meeting.”
    A digital archive of The Independent would allow students and the public to search a database for keywords and retrieve a copy of every newspaper article ever published on any given subject.
    “I don’t know if it will be searchable by every word, but it will be indexed,” Harding said.
    “We have got them (copies of The Independent) all the way back to the beginning sitting in a filing cabinet,” Morasch said. “We don’t want to lose that history.”
    “We are digitizing the art department slides and other teaching materials right now,” Morasch said. “So we were thinking, ‘Okay if we take it another step… let’s do a digital archive of the newspaper.’”
    She said that copies of The Phoenix, the annual art review created by students, may also be digitally archived; however, Morasch said that is only a long-term goal that was mentioned in the meeting.
    Morasch said that in the past, students and faculty have approached library staff searching for specific articles on specific subjects facing. Locating these articles was a challenge. “I had someone come in here searching for six hours, not finding what they were looking for,” she said. “So that is where the idea of digitizing came about.”
    “We’ll be able to look back and accurately see what happened historically throughout the campus’ history,” Christina Kopinski, journalism professor and The Independent adviser said. “From my standpoint, will be a good resource for reporters conducting background research, especially since our archives in the newsroom sometimes miss issues from 20 years ago.”
    In addition to The Independent, the library staff was considering making archives of The Galapocon, an annual yearbook that halted in 1969.
    Harding said, “It stopped in 1969, and I think it was just an overwhelming project.”
    “I’m giving away my age, but I was here then,” Roxanne Dimyan, Clark library specialist said. “When I was here it must have just stopped, because I just started then, and I had never seen The Galapocon.”
    Digital archives are made by making a digital photo of each article and combining them in an indexed database.
    “We digitize the article, that’s like taking a picture,” Robert Schimelphenig, archive specialist said. “Then we put everything into a database, and then we have to make it searchable with an index.”
    Morasch said that the library is working on creating an archive of art department slides. Once grant funds become available, the project to archive The Independent and The Phoenix will begin.