The AHC recently welcomed a new Digital Archivist, Rachel Gattermeyer. In her position, Rachel plans to increase the accessibility of the AHC’s born-digital collections, identify new directions for digital preservation, and work with other departments at the University to share the Center’s broad range of materials.

“I am thrilled to be working at the AHC,” says Rachel. “The American Heritage Center has a strong reputation in the archival profession for innovative practices and exploring new approaches to preservation and access. It’s great that I can be a part of that.”

Rachel comes to Wyoming with her master’s degree in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Data Curation, from a top ranked program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

After receiving her degree, she worked as a Digital Archivist at a small religious archive for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Cincinnati, Ohio. There she created a digital preservation program that captured a backlog of 10 years’ worth of materials and provided online access to photographs and documents of the Order’s early years in the United States.

“For me, access to archival collections is crucial.” Why put in the hard work to preserve the records if only to hide them away? I want to make our born-digital collections more available to our community, whether it’s used for research, casual browsing, or somewhere in between. The AHC has a fantastic variety of materials. I want to invite our community to use our records, and sharing our digital materials online is an excellent way to do this.”

The digital preservation program at the AHC handles born-digital records, which are records created originally on a computer or other digital device. There are currently over 180 digital collections under the Center’s care, which contain about 8TB of data and include video, audio, text, and photos.

Rachel can be reached at rgatterm@uwyo.edu or at 307-766-5614.