The University Archives preserves organizational records and faculty papers of enduring historical value to support the university mission and the research needs of academic and administrative units, faculty, staff, students, and others at NDSU and beyond. NDSU departments are encouraged to contact the NDSU Archives to make arrangements to transfer their records.
The Photography Collection of the University Archives contains photographs documenting the university. Photographs are arranged into six sections:
- Campus Activities (including sports)
- Campus Buildings
- Campus Departments
- Experiment Station/Extension Service
- Faculty and Staff
- Alumni Portraits
The NDSU Photography Collection is open for research in the NDSU Archives Research Room; NDSU Archives staff members are available to provide research assistance. A collection of NDSU-related images is available on Flickr. The current emphasis for this collection is documenting campus life, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s.
University Archives Photographs on Flickr
Materials from the University Archives are not available through Interlibrary Loan. Please contact the NDSU Archives for information about obtaining copies of materials.
In the interest of documenting one of the most challenging events in the history of NDSU, the NDSU Archives has created the COVID-19 Collection. The collection includes items that tell the story of NDSU’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including announcements to the university, internal communications from various colleges, policies and procedures created in response to the pandemic, audio and video recordings, signs, photographs, and other artifacts. Digital items in this collection are available in the NDSU Repository.
If you have physical or electronic items that you would like to donate to the COVID-19 Collection, please contact the NDSU Archives at ndsu.archives@ndsu.edu or 701-231-8914.
As per NDSU Policy 713, within the approved Records Retention Schedule, there are University records that need to be transferred to the NDSU Archives for final disposition. Please follow the respective instructions below for either Hard Copy Records or Electronic Records.
To transfer hard copy University Records
- First, please fill out the Records Transmittal Form
- Secondly, once you have completed the form, please print a copy for your records and place another copy on top of the folders in the first box of records (if there is more than one box). Please fill out the form with as much detail as possible.
- Thirdly, bring the records to the Archives. If more than one box, it is possible to have facilities bring them. If you do this, please let the Archives know that you are sending over records
For sending over: Use only cubic foot boxes (like these here) (if it’s small enough to fit in a folder, then that’s fine). If you are sending more than one box, please number the boxes accordingly to what's on the transmittal form.
To transfer electronic University Records
- First, please fill out the Records Transmittal Form
- Secondly, save a copy onto the records if possible. Please fill out the form with as much information as possible.
- Acceptable forms of transfer: Email (please put the subject line as Records Transfer), CDs, DVDs, Flash drives.
- Please list names of individual files if possible.
- Formats of files:
- Documents: Microsoft files, PDFs, Plain Text (.txt), and Rich Text (.rtf)
- Photographs
- Audio files: .wav, .mp3
- Video files: .mp4 (others may be accepted, contact staff for information)
- Please include date ranges on the files
- Please include Volume of files and number of files