"It's big!" "It's a huge operation!" "Everything is coming together!"  Judy Miller, Special Collections Librarian, and Mel Doering, University Archivist, are excited about their work for the University's 150th celebration. A massive web site will bring the University's history to life through images, text, and sound as well as offer interactive features like clickable maps for each era, slide shows, and video clips. For months, Miller and Doering have been sorting, scanning, compiling, and sleuthing—one president's photo is still missing, Aaron Gurney, 1869-71. The scanning of archival resources has been an important step for the 150th and beyond.

Moving the archival material to online access has been a goal of Judy Miller's since she stepped into her present position in 2006. "Trying to make resources accessible without the Archive's having to worry about damage or loss" is a goal of the project, she says. Right now the scans are organized on a shared access drive for the Archive, with a long-term plan of a database of many kinds of information.

She and student employee Kate Shelly began the project with boxes of about a thousand slides dating from the 1950s. Next came the lantern slides of Professor Bowden from 1900-1920 and other lantern slides of the campus buildings from yearbooks of the 20s and 30s. Though the effort was essential for the 150th anniversary publications, it will be helpful for other projects as well.

According to Mel Doering, the Archive receives on average one request per day for information, much of it genealogy requests. Until now, he has responded by copying the information into email. Kate Shelly's digital photography and scanning allows for more satisfactory delivery. "Technology allows me to take a photo of a ledger entry, for example. That will be a lot nicer for framing than an e-mail text," she notes. Shelley has worked in the archive while taking an MALS and her law degree. Because she plans to work in historic preservation law, the archival student job has been perfect.

In terms of organizing the scanned material, Miller says an archivist works differently than a librarian. In an archive,  the orginal stays as it was compiled; digital files allow archivist the most flexibility, regardless of original format. So if a president sends over a file folder, the items will stay together as sent. A database and specialized software appropriate for an archive will eventually make the material available. Copyright issues are complex, she notes, since the materials come from so many sources.

In a way, Mel Doering serves as the current database since his association with VU began in 1947 as a student, and he stayed on to serve as University Press Secretary until 1955. After working for Lutheran-associated groups, he returned to VU in 1970 as Director of Publications. He has served as University Archivist for the last 15 years. He agrees that with more resources online he will be able to provide more satisfactory responses to the many e-mail requests he handles.