STORM Guide: Transfer Process

The Life of a Record

Appraisal

Make an appointment with us to assess your organization’s materials.

We’ll learn about your collection and make plans for the future of your records. 

Acquisition

Your organization signs a donor agreement and your records begin their life at Wilson Library.

Processing

Finally, we create a finding aid, so that researchers can locate your materials in our collection.

Access

Your collection will be available for researchers to use as primary resources for things like scholarly articles, books and general knowledge.

After consulting with University Archives and signing the donor agreement:

• Before transferring your records to the archive, you will sign a donor agreement and give a brief overview of what you're donating.  
• This is an agreement between the archives and your organization that your group is giving these records to the archives and that we promise to protect and preserve them. 
• Once signing this form, it is a general agreement for the first and future records transfers so a signature will not be required multiple times. 
• Anyone in your group can sign the form as a representative for your group. Generally, some groups choose their president or other elected official, such as a group historian, to come in and sign. You could even choose one person to stay in contact with University Archives for handling this paperwork and records transfers. 
• At this stage talk to our archivists about whether you’d like materials to be restricted. University Archives can keep materials safe for a number of years without making them available in the reading room. 

Once you have discussed your donation with University Archives, you'll need to plan for the transfer process. This section of the guide provides some information about the transfer process.  

If your work is on removable media; including: 

• External hard drives 

• USB flash drives
• Floppy Disks 
• CDs and DVDs 

Then follow these steps:

1. Let University Archives know that you have digital records on removable media 

2. Make an appointment to drop off the media 
3. If your records are on media that doesn’t need to be returned to your organization, like floppy disks you won’t use later, we will ingest the files on the media, then recycle or keep it. 
4. If your records are on media that needs to be returned to your organization, like a hard drive that you will continue to use, we will ingest the files, then return the drive back to you. 
5. If needed, University Archives can temporarily supply a drive for you to use for donating your records. 

If your work is on a cloud service (i.e. Google Drive), then

1. Create a folder in your organization’s drive that you will share with University Archives (it could be called ‘University Archives’!) 

2. Add your labeled folders for donations to the University Archives folder you created. 
3. After consulting with University Archives and signing the donor agreement, share the folder with the University Archives Gmail account. 

Capturing web and social media content: 

University Archives uses the program Archive-It to capture records from the web.  

1. Share the link of the website(s) your organization uses. 
2. University Archives will schedule Archive-It to crawl your sites. 
3. Record of the site will be available on Archive-it.org and the Internet Archive. 

Paper Records

1. Organize the paper materials in folders and boxes. Please label the folders with a short description of the contents and the date of the materials. 

Many social media and email services have the options to download your archive. If you're interested in having a personal record, more information on how to download your social media account archives below: