It’s Preservation Time in Texas!

The purpose of the Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections’ resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections. 

It's Baseball Time in Texas! In honor of Opening Day at Globe Life Field, UTA Special Collections is excited to announce that the Texas Rangers World Series Collection is now accessible on the UTA Libraries Digital Archive.  

The Texas Rangers’ 2023 season was a historic occasion in Arlington’s history. After being in Arlington for over 50 years, the Rangers won their first World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays, the Baltimore Orioles, the Houston Astros, and the Arizona Diamondbacks to reach the pinnacle of the baseball world.  

Throughout October 2023, Arlington and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex played host to numerous playoff games, watch parties, community gatherings, and a victory parade attended by an estimated 700,000 people. 

I was fortunate to be able to celebrate the Rangers’ World Series win with fans from all over Texas during the victory parade held on November 3, 2023. It was amazing to see how many people showed up to celebrate and how this win impacted the community. People around us were celebrating, reminiscing on seasons past, and standing together to support their hometown team. Surrounded by the crowd, I realized that UTA Special Collections needed to document the community's experience throughout this World Series run and preserve these memories in the archive.  

Immediately following the celebration, UTA Libraries Special Collections put out a call to the community for donations of digital or digitized materials related to the Rangers’ playoff run, the World Series, and the following celebrations. In the story of the Texas Rangers' first World Series win, the community plays an important part, and we are honored to collect and preserve those community memories. We had a wonderful response of donations that documents how much the Texas Rangers, and this victory, means to the community. 

These are just a few of the hundreds of photos and videos that were donated to the collection. To learn more about these donations and their stories, click on the images to see the copy in the Digital Archive and their descriptions. 

So how do we preserve born-digital material? Born-digital refers to any material that was originally created in a digital format. In the modern era, we are constantly creating things digitally in our daily lives. The World Series victory and subsequent celebrations are a perfect example of this. People were taking videos and photos on their phones and posting them to social media rather than developing photo film and creating a scrapbook or creating home videos on a camcorder as we might have seen in the past. This change in how we make memories presents a unique opportunity to preserve born-digital materials.  

In 2021, UTA Libraries launched the Digital Archive, which provides access to born-digital materials held by the UTA Libraries Special Collections. Not only does the Digital Archive provide access to born-digital materials, it also provides long-term preservation of the materials it holds. The UTA Digital Archive is powered by Preservica, a digital preservation system that integrates different tools and workflows to store, organize, and maintain the integrity of digital files. Like acid-free boxes and temperature-controlled storage for paper records, the Digital Archive protects these materials, so they are accessible for future researchers. To paraphrase Chuck Morgan, “It’s preservation time in Texas!” 

The Texas Rangers World Series Collection can be found by following this link to the Digital Archive. The collection is organized into 4 series:  

• American League Division Series 

• American League Championship Series 

• World Series 

• Victory Celebrations 

Within each event, the folders are organized by donor’s last name. You can view information about each donation by clicking the folder named for a specific donor. The collection descriptions will be available at the top of the page as seen in the image below. To view all the information about a specific donor, select “Show more” as seen circled in red in the image below. Some of the donors provided stories or memories they wanted to share which are also included in the collection descriptions. 

All materials in this collection are freely accessible through the Digital Archive and available for research and download. The photographs and videos are available online under the non-exclusive terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license, which allows others to adapt and share the materials while giving the creator credit.  

If you are interested in donating to the collection, you haven’t struck out yet! UTA Special Collections is still accepting donations to add to the Texas Rangers World Series Collection. Donations are limited to digital or digitized materials, which can include events relating to the Rangers’ playoff run, the World Series, the surrounding celebrations, and the ring and trophy ceremonies. Examples of donations include, but are not limited to, videos from the victory parade in Arlington, photographs from individual playoff games, fan-created digital artwork, or photographs from the Arlington community at the height of the celebrations around the Rangers’ victory. 

Community members and Rangers fans are invited to donate their materials through this online form. 

For more information about the UTA Texas Rangers World Series Digital Collection, please contact Kathryn Slover , Digital Archivist, by phone (817-272-7150) or email  (kathryn.slover@uta.edu)