Welcome!

The Building the Future of Archival Education and Research Initiative represents a collaborative effort amongst eight U.S. academic institutions to stimulate the growth of a new generation of academics in archival education who are versed in contemporary issues and knowledgeable of the work being conducted by colleagues. The initiative seeks to nurture and promote the state-of-the-art in scholarship in Archival Studies, broadly conceived, as well as to encourage curricular and pedagogical innovation in archival education across the United States and worldwide.

As part of this effort, annual week-long summer Archival Education and Research Institutes (AERI) are being hosted by partner institutions.  The Institutes are designed to strengthen education and research and support academic cohort-building and mentoring. Institutes are open to all academic faculty working and doctoral students working in Archival Studies, both nationally and internationally.  Scholarship support is available to untenured ladder faculty and doctoral students whose major focus is Archival Studies and employed by or attending U.S. academic institutions.

A second component of this effort is the encouragement of a larger and more diverse cohort of doctoral students in Archival Studies.  The Emerging Archival Scholars Program (2011-2015) provides scholarships to attend AERI as well as additional mentoring and research opportunities for minority students at the undergraduate and graduate levels who are considering undertaking doctoral education focusing in Archival Studies.  The Archival Education and Research (AER) Doctoral Fellows comprise two cohorts (2009 and 2010) of doctoral students who have been awarded 4-year fellowships to undertake a doctoral program focusing on Archival Studies at one of the eight participating colleges or universities through competitive 4-year Fellowships.

The fourth AERI will take place at UCLA in 2012.  There will also be a Digital Curation Pre-Conference led by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers held at UCLA preceding AERI 2012.  Applications are now being accepted; deadline to apply is March 1, 2012. Search the site to learn more about this project, the partnering institutions, and about AERI 2009 (UCLA), AERI 2010 (University of Michigan) and AERI 2011 (Simmons College).

The Building the Future of Archival Education and Research Initiative is funded by two 4-year grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services - Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.

Latest News

Application for AERI 2012 is now open.  Read about AERI 2009, 2010 & 2011. Check out what's coming in 2012. 

Application for the Emerging Archival Scholars Program is now open for undergraduate and graduate students who have an interest in pursuing a doctorate in Archival Studies.

Center for Information as Evidence

This project is being coordinated through the Center for Information as Evidence (CIE) at UCLA. The Center serves as an interdisciplinary forum addressing the ways in which information objects and systems are created, used, and preserved as legal, administrative, scientific, social, cultural and historical evidence.   CIE is committed to incorporating perspectives from ethnic communities from around the world in order to sustain the diversity within indigenous cultural heritages and broaden methods of information analysis and conservation.