Collecting Policy

For definitions of terms referred to in the Archives’ Collecting Policy, please consult the Society of American Archivists’ Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology.

Overview

It is the mission of the Archives to promote knowledge and understanding of The New School and its communities by collecting, preserving, contextualizing, and making accessible a rich array of records.

The collecting goal for the Archives’ academic and institutional records is to capture detailed snapshots of important university activity as the school evolves over time. In this effort, we aim to document university governance; student life and organizations; labor organizing and activism; administrative processes; policy making; curriculum development; public programs; and faculty and student work.

In addition to documenting New School history, the Archives collects records that enrich the scholarly, applied practices, and creative pursuits of the New School community.

Ethical Collecting

The Archives approaches its collecting thoughtfully, flexibly, and revisits its policies regularly, periodically identifying new areas of collecting focus (e.g., underrepresented schools) and initiating projects that produce new records (e.g., oral histories) to fill in gaps in the available record of institutional activity and its impact.

Crucially, the Archives seeks out the voices and perspectives of underrepresented members of the university community, including students, administrators, faculty, and groups that may hold opposing or dissenting views from the administration.

For more information about this policy, see the Code of Ethics that guides our work.

Identifying Records of Value

Appraisal to determine records’ long-term value incorporates a matrix of criteria, which includes consulting with offices and material/content creators to evaluate the material under consideration and the role it may play in providing an understanding of the university. While value judgements are inherently subjective, the staff of the Archives attempts to be aware of their biases and counteract them with input from diverse stakeholders.

Other important decision factors include:

Singularity of material and of perspective.
Significance to the current university community.
Projected future value for understanding New School history.
Material format (The Archives rarely collects three-dimensional objects, for details, please see below).

The Archives is unable to collect the following:

Garments, accessories, or textiles, with the exception of fabric swatches and samples.
Original artwork.
Objects, except for select realia produced by the university.
Microfilm.
Published commercial music recordings and commercial motion picture recordings.
Clippings libraries.

Record Categories

The following collecting areas delineate general categories of consideration for the Archives. These categories may shift and should not be construed as a comprehensive delimitation of the extent of the Archives’ collecting areas.

Student Work

The Archives strives to collect examples of student work from across the university. Policies for acquiring student work are contingent upon student consent. Students retain intellectual control, including copyright and intellectual property rights, over their work, in accordance with The New School’s Intellectual Property Rights Policy.

Examples of records the Archives may collect from students, in both analog and digital form, include:

Art and design projects
Text and multimedia theses
Class-produced assignments, including websites and social media
Documentation about field projects
Recordings of performances and presentations

Faculty and Staff

Records from selected faculty, staff, and associates who have made a significant contribution to the university. The Archives periodically also accepts the personal papers of faculty, with consideration given to the duration of employment at The New School.

Examples of documentation the Archives may collect in this category relate to:

Course planning and teaching
Conference proceedings
Grant projects
Administrative and committee work
Scholarly and artistic practice
Social engagement

Academic Departments and Centers

Records from academic departments and centers.

Examples of documentation from these units relate to:

Syllabi and course data
Curriculum development
Building and space planning
Faculty affairs and policies
Commencement and key events
Recruitment and retention
Strategic planning and crisis management
Event recordings and documentation

Student Life

Formal and informal records documenting campus activity. Examples of documentation the Archives may collect in this category relate to:

Governance and advisory committee work
Organizations and activities
Activism and community service
Creative work executed outside of the classroom environment

Administration

Records from executive and administrative offices that document governance and leadership stances, policies, and actions at The New School, as well as records that shed light on the day-to-day activities of administrative departments. This category includes records from the Board of Trustees, as well from the offices of president, provost, executive and school deans, institutional research, marketing and development, and student enrollment and success, among others.

Examples of documentation that the Archives may collect from these units include:

Meeting minutes
Annual reports
Accreditation documentation
Strategic plans and initiatives
Internal and external studies and surveys
Policies
Presentations and speeches
Correspondence and key communications
Event recordings and documentation

Personal and Subject-Specific Papers

In addition to documenting New School history, the Archives acquires records that reflect the lives and work of selected faculty and alumni and periodically adds collections to its holdings that enrich the scholarly, applied practices, and creative pursuits of the New School community.

A Note on Sustainable Digital Growth

As the Archives’ digital preservation initiative becomes more widely known to the university community, the Archives anticipates that it may face competing demands to accommodate perceived needs for long-term digital preservation. While this pressure is expected, the sustainability of the Archives' preservation service is dependent upon an ongoing analysis of costs in relation to the benefits that the service is capable of realizing. To that end, the Archives is committed to continually weighing and recalibrating its appraisal criteria and collecting policies. Priority for selection depends upon factors that include existing and projected costs, and available resources.

The Archives has identified three additional factors that impact digital sustainability practices:

Technical

As the use-value of digital assets becomes further defined, the policies and processes for preservation may be adjusted to allow for additional compression, format migration, or reduced backup. In the near-term, implementing a new repository management system will allow for closer analysis of current digital assets to identify where these efficiencies may be applied. The Archives is also committed to scalable digitization processes by tailoring technical specifications to the type of asset.

Environmental

The Archives considers the environmental impact of uncontrolled data creation to be a critical factor in digital preservation efforts. Through adjustable processes for intellectual and technical curation, the Archives is able to support the ongoing organization and distillation of university data, reducing redundancy and purging lesser-value assets, resulting in honed collections of archival assets with increased value for the community.

Cultural

Support from university leadership enables the Archives to cultivate stakeholder relations across the community. These relations facilitate informed transfers to the Archives and establish the framework by which long-term value may be evaluated.