The university of arizona and the western archeological and conservation center (wacc) archives staff will collaborate to provide an archives focused educational work experience opportunity for…

The university of arizona and the western archeological and conservation center (wacc) archives staff will collaborate to provide an archives focused educational work experience opportunity for anthropology, archives, library, digital information, and museum studies students. The purpose is to complement classroom instruction with hands-on work activities in a variety of areas that describe, preserve, and make cultural and natural resource information in archival records more available for public use. Participants will gain new knowledge and skills relevant to archival and museum management professions and studies. The objectives of this agreement are to complete final processing, cataloging and or accretion of approximately 162 linear feet (about 259,200 items) of cultural collections from several parks and update storage location in the catalog records, improve long-term preservation of these collections by RE-boxing 162 linear feet of material (259,200 items) into acid-free containers and applying storage labels, and improve discoverability of these collections by updating or creating finding aids. The NPS manages documentation of the results of scientific endeavors during the past century. Over 40% are inaccessible, but the need to locate information in these them grows daily. This project will provide an ideal hands-on forum for students to acquire diverse skills in describing and storing these records and experience with an electronic system of museum recordkeeping. This project provides an archives-focused educational work experience for archives, library, digital information, and museum studies students which will complement classroom instruction while promoting public access to archival information from several parks and the western archeological and conservation center (wacc). Students, in cooperation with archivists from wacc, will process, catalog, rehouse, and create file level descriptive metadata for NPS documentation containing cultural resources information. Finding aids will be developed to provide access to the collections for staff and researchers. Students will gain experience applying best practices for the preparation of documents for digitization based on widely accepted standards recommended by national archives and records administration (nara). Participants will gain new knowledge and skills relevant to archival and museum management professions and studies.