Welcome to the PSC Archives Lib Guide! This guide is here to introduce patrons like you to the collection of materials of historic importance to our Prairie State College. Our archivist, Alex Altan, has worked to gather documents, photos, meeting minutes, even plaques and awards, that provide an educational and fun look into the past of PSC. In the following pages we will provide the scope and focus of the collection, links to the elements of the collection that have been digitized, as well as information on how to view the physical materials held in our Archives.

The word archives can be used in three different ways:

• The word archives (usually written with a lower case a and sometimes referred to in the singular, as archive) refers to the permanently valuable records—such as letters, reports, accounts, minute books, draft and final manuscripts, and photographs—of people, businesses, and government. These records are kept because they have continuing value to the creating agency and to other potential users. They are the documentary evidence of past events. They are the facts we use to interpret and understand history.
• An Archives (often written with a capital A and usually, but not always, in the plural) is an organization dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage of a particular group: a city, a province or state, a business, a university, or a community. For example, the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, The Coca-Cola Company Archives, and The Archives of the Episcopal Church are all responsible for the preservation and management of archives.
• The word archives is also used to refer to the building or part of a building in which archival materials are kept, i.e., the archival repository itself.

Source: Excerpted from The Story Behind the Book: Preserving Authors’ and Publishers’ Archives by Laura Millar

What are Archives ? You Tube video

What are Archives

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Oct 11, 2023

There are some basic terms for anyone to understand when searching Archives Collections. 

• Record Group
• Record Sub Group
• Record Series Number

Let's take a look at what these terms mean.

Record Group: a collection of records that share the same provenance or were created in the same administrative unit or department. For example records created and collected by English Department in an academic institution will be organized under English Department Records group.

Record Sub Group: a body of related records within a record group or collection, each corresponding to an administrative subdivision in the originating organization. For example newsletters that are generated and published by the students of a university are considered to be a record sub group.

Record Series Number: A group of similar records that are arranged according to a filing system and that are related as the result of being created, received, or used in the same activity; a file group; a record series. For example a record group series number for the records of administrative services memos would be numbered as RGAdmin 1-1.

What Are Archives and How Do They Differ from Libraries?

Libraries in towns (public libraries) or universities (academic libraries) can generally be defined as “collections of books and/or other print or nonprint materials organized and maintained for use.”* Patrons of those libraries can access materials at the library, via the Internet, or by checking them out for home use. Libraries exist to make their collections available to the people they serve.

Archives also exist to make their collections available to people, but differ from libraries in both the types of materials they hold, and the way materials are accessed.

• Types of Materials: Archives can hold both published and unpublished materials, and those materials can be in any format. Some examples are manuscripts, letters, photographs, moving image and sound materials, artwork, books, diaries, artifacts, and the digital equivalents of all of these things. Materials in an archives are often unique, specialized, or rare objects, meaning very few of them exist in the world, or they are the only ones of their kind.

  Examples of archival materials include: letters written by Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois), Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural drawings (Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), photographs documenting the construction of the Panama Canal (Transportation History Collection, University of Michigan Special Collections), and video footage from I Love Lucy television episodes (the Paley Center for Media, New York and Los Angeles).

• Access to Materials: Since materials in archival collections are unique, the people (archivists) in charge of caring for those materials strive to preserve them for use today, and for future generations of researchers. Archives have specific guidelines for how people may use collections (which will be discussed later in this guide) to protect the materials from physical damage and theft, keeping them and their content accessible for posterity.

  Example: Checking out a book from a library causes it to eventually wear out, and then the library buys a new copy of the same book. Checking out the handwritten diary of a historic figure from an archives would cause the same physical deterioration, but the diary is irreplaceable.

Note that there is a great deal of overlap between archives and libraries. An archives may have library as part of its name, or an archives may be a department within a library.

Example: The Performing Arts Reading Room in the Library of Congress.

Source: Society of American Archivists