Office of Communications and Marketing Records

Collection

Call Number: UA252

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Scope and Contents

This collection contains files about Tufts faculty and Trustees compiled by the Office of Communications and Marketing, including photographs, newspaper clippings, correspondence, publications, event programs, press releases, personnel records, resumes and other biographical information, course materials and notes, research and project proposals and reports, obituaries, and other materials. This collection also contains published issues of and production materials for Tufts Medicine, Tufts Nutrition, and Tufts Dental magazines; VHS and beta tapes, CDs, and DVDs of Tufts events or events featuring members of the Tufts community; and public relations and publicity files about Tufts schools, buildings, events, people, issues, and groups, including photographs, newspaper clippings, publications, event programs, press releases, speeches, and other materials.

Dates

circa 1861 -- 2021

Creator

Office of Communications

Access

This collection contains some restricted material. Restrictions related to specific material are listed in the detailed contents list.

Conditions Governing Use

Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Please see “Reproductions and Use” on the Digital Collections and Archives website for more information about reproductions and permission to publish. Copyright to all materials created by Tufts University employees in the course of their work is held by the Trustees of Tufts University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Transferred by the Office of Communications and Marketing, 2018 -- 2022, accessions UA-2019-036, UA-2022-034, and UA-2023-026.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged in seven series: Public Relations files; Trustees files; Photograph and publicity files; Publications; Faculty files; Videos; and 2022 accessions. Series and item titles for the first six series were provided by the Office of Communication and Marketing.

Extent

57.2 Linear Feet

15 Digital Object(s)

2.35 Gigabytes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Overview

This collection contains the records of the Office of Communications and Marketing, including files about Tufts faculty and Trustees; published issues of and production materials for Tufts magazines; video recordings of Tufts events or events featuring members of the Tufts community; and public relations and publicity files about Tufts schools, buildings, events, people, issues, and groups.

Biographical / Historical

The Office of Communications and Marketing is a part of the division of University Relations and manages the image of and communications from the university. Though documentation suggests that a department with these responsibilities has existed since the 1920s, the first official reference to the office appears as “The Public Relations Office” in the President’s Report for the 1946-1947 school year. Its main responsibility was originally managing the image of the university, faculty, and students in national and local media. It also had direct ties to the Tufts’ Alumni Review, first acting as the magazine’s original publisher, and then solely as a contributor to the “Class Notes” section after 1955.

Since its inception, the Office has changed its name several times. It was originally known as The Public Relations Office in 1946, and had shifted by the 1970s to be named The Office of Public Information. In 1979, it was consolidated with the Office of Publications to create the Office of Communications; ten years later, this was updated to the Office of Communications and Public Relations.

As of 2019, the Office comprises three departments: Public Relations, Editorial, and Marketing and Branding. The Public Relations Department manages external media sources, and tracks news coverage of the university. The Editorial Department manages eight university publications in both print and digital mediums, and additionally oversees an online gallery of images. The Marketing and Branding department maintains the university’s visual identity, as well as all official university social media.

Processing Information

Processing of this collection was completed by Leah Edelman in 2019. Materials were placed in archival boxes if the original housing was damaged, and loose materials were placed in folders where needed. Received order, as well as series arrangement and folder and item titles, were maintained. Duplicate items were removed and deaccessioned. Data from initial cataloging provided by the Office of Communications and Marketing was repurposed to create file level records for physical material; born digital materials were cataloged at the box level and transferred to a stabilization queue for the Digital Archivist. Series level descriptions as well as a finding aid were created at the time of processing. Digital video files from the 2021 accession were processed by Jane Kelly, Records and Accessioning Archivist, in February 2022. Materials were bagged using Bagger and ingested to the Tufts Digital Library. Received order was maintained. A file-level inventory was created, and series and collection-level description were updated at the time of processing.