Library News
Eastern Illinois University’s Digital Archive, The Keep, Reaches Major Milestone
Posted on January 18th, 2024
Booth Library is proud to announce a milestone in the preservation and sharing of the creative and scholarly work of Eastern Illinois University. The Keep, EIU’s digital archive, has just posted its 100,000th object.
The historic 100,000th object, posted on December 12, 2023, is a photograph from the investiture ceremony of Jay Gatrell. The photograph captures a significant moment in the university’s history, and through serendipity represents a historic accomplishment for The Keep. The 100,000 entry can be viewed at here. The image was created by Jay Gabriec, the university photographer, who has contributed a remarkable collection of over 1,300 entries to The Keep.
The Keep is the EIU institutional repository, a digital archive of faculty scholarship, student and professional journals, graduate theses, undergraduate honors papers, EIU historical documents, committee documents and more. The mission of The Keep is to digitize, preserve and promote the scholarly and creative output of EIU, optimizing the content for easy online discovery.
Todd Bruns, Head of Scholarly Communications, shared appreciation of hitting this milestone, “I am beyond thrilled that we have passed the milestone of 100,000 works posted. The Keep presents the digital life and history of Eastern Illinois University in a variety of formats, from photo galleries of important events like Commencement and the Investiture of a new president, past editions of The Warbler- EIU Yearbook spanning from the 1920s onward, to collected scholarship like master’s theses and faculty research. Online collections like the historical publications of EIU’s Alumni Services extends the reach of our institution worldwide – Alumni Services publications have been downloaded over 17,000 times to 108 countries around the world, from Athens to Bangkok and Lagos to Shanghai. With the recent record recruitment numbers of international students, the increased digital footprint of EIU via online collections of the Eastern Alumnus, Old Main Line, and ForeverEIU, can only be a boon.”
We invite you to explore The Keep by visiting https://thekeep.eiu.edu/.
