One hundred years of lessons learned: How AUC’s university archives leveraged digital collections in service of our centennial

Throughout 2019 and 2020 the American University in Cairo has been celebrating its Centennial, supported extensively by AUC’s University Archives. This session will explore the Archives’ contributions, and how initiatives to make collections available, usually through digitization, facilitated the university’s drawing upon its heritage. Commemorations have taken the form of events, on-campus and online exhibitions and displays, and university publications like its magazine and a major book. In supporting all these areas and more, the Archives has drawn on projects begun years before to “unlock” important sources like historic films or student newspapers via digitizing, but has also taken advantage of opportunities afforded by the Centennial to expand its profile and access to holdings. Lessons learned by Archives staff in the process will be shared with those at AMICAL institutions seeking to mine their own schools’ histories to simultaneously serve present day institutional needs and advance library and archives priorities. Attendees will also learn how collaborations between the University Archives and other units on campus, such as the Office of Communications and the AUC Press, and with internal library units like the Digitization Center, proved essential to the university’s successful celebration of its past as it begins its second century.