By Monique Lassere, Digital Archivist, Houghton Library
Hi, everyone. My name is Monique and I am Houghton Library’s new Digital Archivist! I started working at Houghton in May 2020. My job sits within the Manuscript Section and revolves around the born-digital collections Houghton acquires in the form of media like hard drives and floppy disks, or networked content, like websites. While I haven’t yet visited Houghton’s physical space due to the pandemic, there’s been no shortage of work to dive into while working remotely.
Over the last few months, I have spent much of my time digging into the born-digital archival materials we have on cloud storage. I’m able to do this because of the previous work conducted by Accessioning Archivist, Melanie Wisner, and past Administrative Fellow and Project Archivist, Magee Lawhorn, to get born-digital work off the ground at Houghton. Before I arrived, Melanie and Magee captured files from born-digital removable media, like the 3.5” floppy disks in the John Updike, John Ashbery, and Jerry Schatzberg papers, respectively. As a result, I can begin to work with the digital files we have on cloud storage to determine how we can best provide access for researchers to these materials.
(more…)