Rutgers and Virginia Tech join forces to create a memorial archive

The powerful missives came to the campus in droves following the April 16 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech: thousands of origami paper cranes – a symbol of world peace; weavings, quilts, and plaques engraved in gold; a life preserver signed by a Coast Guard unit; a poem from an inmate at an Alabama correctional facility.

Eileen Hitchingham, dean of university libraries at Virginia Tech, knew these gifts of comfort had to be preserved, but the library was not at a point where they could instantly provide a digital archive for the tens of thousands of artifacts. By early June, nearly 75,000 items had been carted by truck to a ballroom in the student center. “It was overwhelming,” Hitchingham said. “Stuff was piling up, and we needed to do something quickly.”

Aware that Rutgers had built a repository of digital artifacts for the state of New Jersey, Hitchingham put in a call in to the Rutgers University Libraries. Could Rutgers, recognized nationally for being at the forefront of digital library technology, have a solution for Virginia Tech?

Rutgers University Librarian Marianne Gaunt and Grace Agnew, associate university librarian for Digital Library Systems, were happy to help. RUCore, the cyber infrastructure developed for Rutgers University and for the New Jersey Digital Highway, a web-based portal to nearly 11,000 of the state’s historical and cultural artifacts, would make it easy for Rutgers to digitally store Virginia Tech items – ranging from photos and artwork to webpages and audio files – and make them accessible online.

In July, Rutgers sent three library staff members to Virginia Tech to explain the RUCore software and train university staff, and, in August, Virginia Tech visited Rutgers. The visiting librarians worked closely with Rutgers staff to organize the material and design the website. Rutgers has agreed to host the collection for a year while Virginia Tech develops the software that will allow its library to take over the digital archive.

A memorial archive is extremely personal, said Agnew, who admitted growing teary-eyed as she poured

through the materials. “The beauty of the Rutgers architecture -- designed to support our research faculty, who need to share their information with their colleagues -- is that our tools allow people to present their information on their own terms," Agnew said. "We provide the framework; Virginia Tech chose the design, the vocabulary, and the search terms – tailored to their unique needs. It’s as if we built the house, and they did the decorating.”

Digitizing and storing the first 100 objects for repository went slowly, and the schools are now collaborating on archiving the second 100. Hitchingham hopes to have the first items available for public view in the coming weeks.

“Rutgers was truly a lifesaver,” Hitchingham said. “The library team responded so quickly to help us solve the immediate problem and has also has provided us with the tools to think strategically for the long term. We are extremely grateful.”

As it plans a more sophisticated cyberinfrastructure, Virginia Tech is considering joining a consortium of university libraries, including Rutgers and other schools, such as Northwestern, Penn State, and Princeton, that will leverage the powerful RUcore framework developed at Rutgers. The consortium will build forward on the RUcore architecture to revolutionize access to data and knowledge generated by universities.