A lump forms in your throat as your trembling hands begin to sweat. Suddenly, the incessant chatter of the outside world is muffled by the booming thuds of your rapidly beating heart.

It’s all gone. Every picture. Every treasured text. If you ever failed to back up a digital file before the computer crashed or the phone fizzles, you know the feeling.

Memories gone, moments lost, history – well – history. Add to that the particular frustration of the uncategorized boxes of stuff in the attic.

The California Honors Program, which has existed at California since the late 1980s, can relate. Some materials, such as scrapbooks created within the past decade, are organized, if not formally archived. But many items are not.

“A previous director, Dr. Edward Chute, left his own personal library to the Honors Program - several thousand books,” said Dr. M.G. Aune, who directs PennWest California’s program.

“He was also a keeper; we’re still finding files and documents, including his master’s thesis from the 1970s. He kept the minutes from the first honors advisory board, student projects from the 1990s. Periodically we try to move it into one room and then put it into boxes.

“In my mind, we’d always do an Honors archive project.”

The time is now.

During the fall semester, 14 Honors Program students in Dr. Laura Tuennerman’s public history course learned archiving basics, teaming up with Julia McGinnis, PennWest’s digital repository librarian, who’s based at Manderino Library.

Students started with an inventory of all the items that have never been archived. They also created a records retention policy proposal to inform decisions about what belongs in the library archives.

Next steps, Aune said, include making assets accessible digitally, and perhaps gathering oral histories from Honors Program alumni who can reflect on notable events in the archives.

“These students were very engaged and invested in creating some sort of history for the Cal U Honors Program,” McGinnis said. “For years, we have collected honors theses and projects the students have done, so we have the scholarly piece of that. But there has not been a formal attempt to pull it all together.”

The ongoing work to digitize various collections continues, McGinnis said. “PennWest operates as a single library system, but each campus will have a separate digital and physical presence.

“The history is the history. We have no intention of merging these collections.”

While PennWest will continue to have an Honors Program, it will, of course, be a bit different.

“Each campus will retain its own honors identity,” Aune said. “The curricular version will be the same, but Edinboro has a project where they write letters to middle school students, Clarion has a summer class on special topics. We will retain those things – the best of both worlds.”

Rising senior Darrek Harshberger is teaming up with a classmate to present a final class project in Tuennerman’s class: Hosting a spring semester event to show California clubs, organizations and others who are interested in how to archive their important treasures.

He is very involved on the California campus as president of Student Government and the Rainbow Alliance, vice president of the Student Association Inc., and a committee chair of the Student Activities Board.

“I think for the students who are here now, and previous students, archiving is a big deal,” Harshberger said. “We all want to know that what used to be here is still here somewhere, so we can look back on it.

“I want to hold every memory I had of Cal U and make new memories of PennWest,” he said. “Cal U is always home.”

All Access

The PennWest libraries at California, Clarion and Edinboro have a unified webpage at library.pennwest.edu/home.

“We worked to merge our library catalogs so that all PennWest users can see the physical library items available at each library and can request that an item be sent to their campus or to their home if they are a Global Online student,” said Mary Buchanan, information literacy librarian. “The faculty librarians offer research assistance, online and in-person appointments, information literacy instruction, and embedding in online courses.”

Also available: U.S. Major Dailies, a database offering full text access to major newspapers, and Westlaw Campus Research. Some databases, such as Statista and Opposing Viewpoints, which were available at only one campus prior to integration, are no longer available to all of PennWest.

Listen to the PennWest POV podcast episode “Evolving to Meet 21st-Century Needs in the Library” at bit.ly/libraryevolves.