April seems to have flown by in a blizzard of book processing, a storm of academic year-end reference inquiries, a gale of exhibition preparation, not to mention a flurry of snow flurries. Frequently throughout the month, our UASC rock beach was covered in snow.

Attractive view, no?

Our team has been very busy with processing adds from the co-operative studies collection, as well as finding space for the new books. After some challenging shifting about, we believe we have found the collection a good home within our main stacks, and look forward to sharing this resource with our researchers.

The unit also had the opportunity to explore a new content-management system this past month. Archivematica is a “free and open-source digital preservation system that is designed to maintain standards-based, long-term access to collections of digital objects.” The University Archives and Special Collections will be employing this system in coming months to manage the born-digital objects donated to the institution, ensuring that these valuable digital objects are safely transferred from their original medium and stored with a wealth of metadata intact. We look forward to better acquainting ourselves with this unique preservation tool.

In further news:

• We are eager to host our SIAST practicum student in the first week of May. Planned activities include tours of our facilities, work with both special collections books and archival materials, handling and scanning of slides, as well as the dismantling of a display.
• Two new exhibits are in the works for the month of May, including a summer-long exhibition of prints and printmaking, and a much briefer exhibition of menus found within the UASC holdings.