ARCHIVING OF COMPS, HONORS PAPERS  & OTHER SIGNIFICANT STUDENT WORK

On Jan 26, 2009, the faculty approved a College policy on Digital Archiving of Comps and Honors Papers.   That policy can be found at https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/library/help/help/digital_comps/

The intent is to systematically collect & archive significant student work in a digital form.   The digital archive is a “dark archive” and can only be accessed by Carleton faculty or their designees (e.g. departmental assistants) and staff in institutional research & assessment. 

In Spring 2009, many academic departments began submitting their students’ work for digital archiving.  Some departments have chosen to have students handle the submission themselves.  Other departments have centralized the collecting of digital files & submission data and submit all student work in a batch.  Most text files (papers/essays) are submitted as pdf files, but there are also approved archival formats for presentations, audio, video, and websites.  Approved formats are listed in the Archiving Student Work: Instructions available on the website.  There are procedures for submitting group work as well as individual work.  Reference librarians and academic technologists are prepared to work with departments on technical issues. 

Starting in late Fall 2009, students will be able to complete all aspects of the submission process online.  Department chairs will be notified when online submission is ready; instructions for doing this will then be found on the website cited above and below.  However, departments may still choose to keep track of which students have or have not submitted their work.  Several departments plan to add digital archiving to their list of comps completion steps.

All department chairs should ensure that faculty, staff and students in their departments are aware of the College’s intent to archive significant student work and discuss how the submission of their department’s student work for digital archiving can become a routine process.  Archiving instructions, procedures and FAQs can be found at https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/library/help/help/digital_comps/

Questions should be directed to Carol Eyler, Comps Archiving Coordinator, x4268 or ceyler@carleton.edu