University Archives, Texas State University

Biography

The University Archives was first organized in 1978 as part of the Learning Resource Center (LRC) – what the library was then called – with the records housed therein. The Department of History allocated funding to hire a part-time archivist responsible for maintaining, organizing, and servicing the Archives Collection, which included official minutes and records of the Board of Regents and University faculties, presidential correspondence, official reports, University and student publications, theses, and records of organizations associated with the University. The University Archives operated with part-time staff, including Dr. Ron Brown who was granted four hours a week (10% FTE) in the Archives, until 1985 when the records were transferred to the library’s Special Collections under the care of the newly-created Wittliff Collections.

In 2006, the University Archives was re-established as a separate collection with the hiring of Kris Toma, the first full-time archivist and records manager. In the fall of 2009, construction of a suite – with a reading room, staff offices and processing area, and a repository – gave the University Archives a physical home on the fifth floor of the Alkek Library. During the planning of the Archives and Research Center (ARC), an archivists’ workroom was incorporated into the building to give the University Archives staff more space to receive and process materials. While the first two years of the ARC’s existence were focused on the transfer of general collection materials to allow the library’s renovation to commence, the strategy changed when the Digital Lab needed to move into the fifth-floor repository space while their second-floor space was under construction. Thus, beginning in January 2019, the majority of the University Archives collection was moved into preservation storage at the ARC.

Found in 9 Collections and/or Records: