This presentation will introduce the shared and varying challenges experienced by two early-career archivists working with born-digital materials during their first year in new positions. While the presenters’ respective public institutions seem disparate in the abstract (The University of Kentucky is a large PWI, while Chicago State University is a small institution that predominantly serves Black and brown students) our work shares the common mission of making born-digital collections discoverable and accessible to all in the hopes of eliminating historical gaps and cultivating new relationships within and beyond our communities. The means and methods of getting there, all those many tiny questions, are still evolving. This presentation will document the state of born-digital migration, arrangement, description, and access we found at the start of our appointment; present challenges and solutions we encountered through our first year; and lay out a roadmap for the work ahead, both in terms of technical challenges and our shared cultural and historical mission.
