One of the earliest decisions I made as the VA History Office\u00a0Senior Archivist was that digital and textual records would carry equal importance in the National VA History Center<\/a>\u00a0(NVAHC) Archives, and that the infrastructure was built at the same time. The truth is that digital materials are as fragile and at risk, just in a different way. Think about the 1990s through the mid-2000s, when we were saving everything to 3.5 inch disks and CD-ROM. Through time, hardware and software changes, and disks simply being thrown away, many of those records are simply gone.<\/p>\n\n\n This dual concept was important enough that when designing an image for the cover of NVAHCA\u2019s Collections Management Plan, I asked our designer, Tessa Kalman, formerly of the Dayton VA Medical Center, to represent both of these priorities, and she did a beautiful job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This balanced emphasis means we can serve a good portion of researchers now<\/em>. Although we do not currently have the kind of physical working space that a researcher would expect, we can still meet at least some of those needs. For example, we have a French researcher working on mental health of returning soldiers. Because one of our collections is solely digital, we are able to respond to her faster than if we only focused on textual collections. It doesn\u2019t make textual materials less important, rather there\u2019s a value lost there if we focused on one aspect of our development. Our collections exist to serve researchers and that\u2019s what we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do we actually serve researchers in France, at universities, and in our own senior leadership? First, by developing an excellent CMP, which tells NVAHC\u00a0Archives what and how, but also defines what researchers can expect and creates a level playing field for service. Then, researchers contact us, usually through the VAHO email\u00a0vahistoryoffice@va.gov<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0with their request. One of the ways we aid research requests is the use of finding aids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is a finding aid? It\u2019s a document that spells out everything about a collection. The\u00a0example below<\/strong><\/a> (PDF, 2 pages) is from our\u00a0Postcards Exhibit<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Collection](\"https:\/\/department.va.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/history-feature-2021111204-scaled.jpg?resize=791,1024\")
How we serve researchers now and in the future.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n