Gregory Colati
Director, Digital Collections and Archives
Tufts University
All Things to All People: Combining resources to build an integrated digital repository

Bio

Greg Colati has been the University Archivist at Tufts since 1997. In 2001 Greg was appointed to the newly created position of Director of the Digital Collections and Archives where he oversees the combined development of the digital library, university archives, and records management programs. Prior to coming to Tufts Greg was the College Archivist at Bowdoin College and Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Papers project, also at Bowdoin.

Presentation Abstract

The Digital Collections and Archives (DCA), Tufts University is using Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture) to build an institutional digital repository. A collaborative effort between the DCA and Tufts Academic Technology, the digital library manages digital library content, faculty research, and university records.

Our aim is to bring together people with different goals but similar needs: storing and maintaining digital content. Faculty, archivists, records managers, and academic technologists all benefit from the knowledge of the other groups. Recordkeeping requirements based on records management principles insure the authenticity of content. Organizational principles developed by archivists keep content in intellectual order. Creating manipulation and delivery tools is the specialty of Academic Technology. Each group brings its own special expertise to the building the repository and attendant tools. The result is a sum that is greater that each of its parts.