Institutional archives at Urban North American Universities: An assessment of current practices

This paper reports a study of institutional archives at urban and metropolitan universities that are members of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU). Founded in 1990, the CUMU is an organization of North American institutions of higher education committed to the shared mission to use the power of their campuses in education, research and service to enhance the communities in which they are located. Currently approximately 90 institutions are members of the CUMU. This paper reports the results of a survey to identify collections, staffing, reporting structures and institutional records management programs. It examines the challenges of collecting and preserving primary and secondary source material that document the history of urban universities.