Experience within the Bentley Historical Library's university archives program suggests that microanalyses of University of Michigan individual websites and their ancestral "legacy" systems of paper-based record groups here reveal a number of interesting and compelling issues. In the professional archival literature, there is an evident gap in such comparisons and hence a lack of opportunity to examine in depth the "mapping" of earlier appraisal strategies onto digital systems. In this proposed module, students would elect to examine the content, structure, and presentation of individual paper-based faculty papers or academic record groups here at the Bentley, and then search for and sample individual faculty or academic units' websites from the same discipline.

Nancy Bartlett and Nancy Deromedi of the Bentley's university archives program would lead this module. Students would be asked to:

• review archival literature on appraisal, including internal Bentley documents
  
• select an individual faculty collection or academic record group
  
• review relevant donor file, finding aid, catalog record
  
• select an individual faculty website or academic website within the same discipline
  
• examine website for content, context, structure, design, presentation, uniqueness, and significance
  
• hold interim meetings with Nancy Bartlett and Nancy Deromedi on the progress of their research (scheduling to be determined)
  
• discuss the findings of the research in an oral presentation to the rest of the class, including a review of the appraisal process of the selected website by presenting the website to the class
  

Students would be provided with:

• a list of suggested published readings and directions towards relevant internal documents on appraisal at the Bentley
  
• a discussion of earlier analyses at the Bentley (Duderstadt, M-Pathways and Solar Car in particular)
  
• a discussion of ongoing work at the Bentley
  
• access to donor files

Background to the materials presented on this website

The Bentley Historical Library's professional staff of archivists play a role in the education of some of the students who are enrolled in the University of Michigan School of Information. A practicum has been developed for the benefit of students within the Archives and Records Management Specialization with collections curator Tom Powers as main instructor. Within the practicum curriculum is a set of options, or "modules," offered to the students. One of the four modules developed for the academic year 2000/2001 is presented on this site. The purpose of presenting this sample module online is to inform more fully our academic colleagues, fellow archivists, and prospective students of this particular offering of the Bentley staff. We would value highly any feedback.

Nancy Bartlett and Nancy Deromedi, module leaders
May 14, 2001

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