RUL Scholarly and Professional Activity Committee

Title:Treasures in our Backyard: Meet the Digital Alcohol Studies Archives

Presenter: Judit Ward with introductory comments from Denise Hien, Vice Provost for Research, Chancellor-Provost’s Office, Rutgers-New Brunswick and CAS Director and panelists Isaiah Beard (Digital Data Curator, RUL Central), James Silverstein (Library Associate, Annex, NBL), Geoffrey Wood (Metadata Librarian, RUL Central).

Abstract: Listed on the Rutgers University Libraries Digital Collections portal, the Digital Alcohol Studies Archives Collection is the deliverable of a one-semester sabbatical leave. Following up on their presentation on the pilot in 2021, a group of collaborators from NBL and Central units will provide insight from multiple perspectives on launching a digital project, selecting and assessing content, determining the right tools to deliver that content, developing and testing workflows, and refining processes. They will use concrete examples to demonstrate practices and solutions that can be extended, universally applied, or customized, and would be beneficial for the community of librarians, archivists, and researchers who consider starting similar projects. Selected from the digital artifacts and remnants of the defunct Alcohol Studies Library and Archives, 1,000+ items have been added to RUcore and Omeka. They are promoted via a public-facing Drupal-based landing page on the RUL site, featuring a Digital Collections search portal. Chronicling the birth of alcohol science as it evolved at Yale and Rutgers, the digital collection of searchable full texts and images now provides access to a great deal of the resources on early alcohol studies history amassed, preserved, and digitized over eighty years.