Our Client, a global automotive company, engaged LAC to develop the Client’s first U.S. research library, complete with corporate archives and business resource center. We purchased the contents of the library in its entirety, designed the space, set up electronic subscriptions, promoted and marketed the library, developed a budget and provided staff to run the library and archives.
LAC was also tasked with the creation of a research portal that allowed for electronic database access and digital archiving. The initial operation involved a total of 11 professionals, including project leader, corporate archivist and several processing archivists, a web master, research librarians and two library technicians.
The Archives: The automaker's archives has over 16,000 photographs of various sizes, 5,000 advertisements and 1,200 standard archive boxes of documents, reports and other written material. A digital archive contains over 12,000 digital-only files and 9,000 reference files using a total of 170 gigs of storage space. The material is cataloged on the Cuadra STAR Archives database. LAC staff assisted in the evaluation of corporate records to determine historic value. Large collections of advertisements, photographs and graphics were accessioned from the automaker's vendors. Material stored at the company’s offsite records storage facility was also accessioned into the collection. Our archivists process the collections following generally accepted archive standards. Generally the collection is processed only to the box level. Due to corporate needs some collections are processed at the item level.
The Archives has produced a wide variety of both short and longer background histories of the auto manufacturer in the U.S. These histories are used in corporate speeches, internal publications, external media guides, video productions, department anniversaries, dealer and distributor events, and on the company's intranet web site. These histories include timelines and top vehicles.
The research portal: Our staff provides retrieval services for employees and associates who need the company's historical assets. There are two scanning stations that allow nearly instant replication into a digital format for most assets. An extensive digital reference database is accessible through the eArchives intranet web site.
The Archive Supervisor is the webmaster for the eArchives intranet web page. This web page acts as the portal through which employees can access the Archival collections.
• Visitors to eArchives on average spend just over 12 minutes per visit and viewed over 168,000 total pages in 2007.
• eArchives highlights include articles, speeches and press releases through a sophisticated search engine. In 2007, approximately 6,000 documents were researched on eArchives.
• eArchive homepage. The eArchive web site provides interesting and informative essays; new essays are added monthly.
• Videos. The eArchive web site is a portal to a TVTube player that features historic automotive videos. In 2007, 35 historical videos were added to eArchives. During the year, these videos were played approximately 1,200 times per month.
• Digital books, facts and figures, glossary, etc. The eArchive web site provides access to a wide variety of reference material. The Glossary and Historic Pricing features are the most heavily used reference materials.
Existing Staff: There are three professional archivists on assignment. This represents approximately 6,000 hours (2,000 hours for each archivist) of available work for the 2008 fiscal year to continue the ongoing eArchive, reference services, interpretive and processing tasks.