BACKGROUND:
The UAA Archives and University Records
The Archives and Manuscripts Department of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) began collecting records of offices of the university in 1979. In that same year, the archivist began urging the adoption of a formal records program for the institution based on the standards for college and university archives recommended by the Society of American Archivists. The concept was also recommended several times thereafter without success. The enactment of the University of Alaska records regulation in 1983, while a major step, did not solve all of the basic issues regarding the preservation of institutional records. In addition, budgetary, space, and other concerns affected the progress of this effort negatively. Nonetheless, a number of important university record series were acquired and preserved.
Early in the history of the archives, the staff sought to acquire and preserve the records of Anchorage Community College (ACC). Both UAA and ACC were historically and physically connected. If a function of the UAA archives was to preserve the cultural history of the community, then the preservation of the records of the leading educational institutions had to be an integral part of that effort. The desire to acquire and preserve ACC records met with limited success until the university reorganized in the mid 1980s. That reorganization resulted in a major influx of records into the department, including ACC administrative files. The volume of reorganization related records greatly taxed the archives' storage capacity. Many of the records acquired at that time remain only partially processed. Nonetheless, the department generally accepts ACC records whenever they are located.
Because of space and floor loading problems, the UAA archives, in 1989, limited its institutional records acquisition efforts to five offices. These offices were: 1) the Chancellor's Office (the most important administrative records for UAA); 2) the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (the unit responsible for academic programs and academic policy implementation); 3) University Relations (the public relations unit of UAA); 4) the Office for Institutional Studies (institutional statistics and data); and 5) the Office for Facilities and Planning (primary records of the physical development of the campus). In the view of the archivist, these records would provide future researchers with basic historical documentation on the history and development of UAA. In 2000, most of the records of the facilities office were transferred out of the archives because many were of a non permanent nature; hence they were not of archival quality.
A variety of UAA and ACC records (beyond the five units mentioned in the preceding paragraph) have been transferred to the archives. Some were transferred as a result of direct or indirect requests from the archives staff or as a result of recommendations by interested parties. In several instances, records were acquired as a result of the office's space problems. In a few cases, files (primarily publications) were received through internal library transfers (from Reference or Reserve). Though the institutional records holdings of the UAA Archives and Special Collections Department are limited, they nonetheless constitute a body of valuable historical resources on the subject of higher education in Anchorage.