Philip M. Hamer–Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Award: Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections for the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

The Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections for the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center (CISDRC) is the 2019 recipient of the Philip M. Hamer–Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award recognizes individuals or institutions that have increased public awareness of archives documents.

The Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center (CISDRC) has compiled more than 180,000 pages of archival records from multiple institutions about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS), the first federally-managed off-reservation boarding school for Native American children and young adults. The CIIS, a frequent topic of scholarly research, had a profound impact on the lives of generations of Native American people. The CISDRC team has created educational materials, facilitated an educational program for teachers, and traveled to communities with a vested interest in the digitized records. From 2013–2018 the website had more than 1.5 million page views and nearly 250,000 individual visitors.

By actively seeking opportunities to share the results of their work with those most affected by the records, CISDRC has actively demonstrated the collections' value on personal, community, scholarly, and societal levels. This project exemplifies the purpose and power of archival materials. In six years since the start of the CISDRC, Dickinson College’s Archives and Special Collections has shown unwavering commitment in connecting this digital collection to the people who can make the best use of it.