University Archives Collection Development Policy
Collecting Guidelines
Collections in the University Archives include, but are not limited to:
- University publications, general and special, including catalogs and bulletins, newsletters, press releases, and promotional material
- Records of the administrative offices, academic departments, and governing bodies of the university, including minutes, correspondence, memoranda, reports
- Records of student organizations
- Architectural and landscaping plans, blueprints, and artists’ renderings, and master plans and other planning documents
- Personal papers, including correspondence, diaries, memoirs, photographs and memorabilia, when such materials are judged to reflect significant events and aspects of campus life
- Publications from the Office of the Chancellor which specifically pertain to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
- Records of student organizations and activities, including minutes, correspondence, publications, ephemera, and realia
- Audio and visual material, including photographs and photo albums, negatives, transparencies, motion pictures, audiotape
- Material from alumni and their organizations, including organizational records, publications and ephemera, when such materials are judged to reflect significant events and aspects of the university’s history
- Master copies of the microfiche of senior projects and master’s theses written by students at Cal Poly
- Monographs written by Cal Poly faculty and administrators
Cal Poly Authors Policy Statement
The University Archives Department collects commercially published monographs written or compiled by members of the university’s faculty. These monographs are placed in the Cal Poly Authors Collection and housed in University Archives. The purpose of this collection is to preserve a record of the scholarly endeavors of the faculty. Materials in this collection are available for use in the University Archives, for exhibitions or for temporary reassignment to the Reserve Room Collection at the discretion of Special Collections staff.
Faculty members who have published are encouraged to provide courtesy copies from their publishers to the Kennedy Library for this collection. Signed copies of faculty monographs are particularly prized.
Excluded from the collection are lab manuals, pamphlets, workbooks, self-published materials and multiple copies of the same title. New editions of older works that are substantially revised will be considered. Donations of such publications are accepted for inclusion in the collection. Second copies may be ordered at the author’s request.
Journal articles, conference proceedings, presentations, or other non-monographic scholarly work produced at Cal Poly is digitized and placed in Cal Poly’s institutional repository.
Requests to add new titles to this collection may be submitted to Collection Development for review with Special Collections. Titles that fit with this collection policy will be added and charged to the funding code for the relevant academic department.
Formats of Primary Source Materials Collected
University Archives acquires through gift or transfer unpublished original materials, including administrative records, agendas and minutes, correspondence, presidents’ papers, diaries, art and architectural drawings, reports, journals, photographs, motion pictures and other visual media, maps, sound recordings, and other materials. University Archives also acquires published materials about Cal Poly or created at Cal Poly.
Collecting Procedures
The University Archivist and University Archives staff are authorized to:
- Develop collecting policies and documentation strategies that provide for the systematic management of the archival record of Cal Poly
- Review all university records, prior to their disposal or destruction, for the purpose of selecting records for retention in the University Archives
- Negotiate for the transfer of archival materials from their originating office to the University Archives
- Identify collections and materials that are physically maintained outside the Library
- Seal records which require confidential treatment as mandated by law or by conditions of transfer or gift
