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SHRAB Educational Scholarship Spotlight: Taylor Chase

by Taylor Chase on 2024-01-30T14:34:00-08:00 in Archives Topics, Grants, SHRAB | 0 Comments

The Nevada State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) is pleased to announce the first of the winners of the 2023 Scholarship in support of educational opportunities related to the care, preservation, and access of Nevada’s historical records. This scholarship was funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Congratulations to Taylor Chase, Archivist II at the Nevada State Library, Archives and Public Records!


Digital archiving is a constantly evolving field, and specialized training is essential when developing the set of skills that the Nevada State Archives needs to manage our permanent digital records. We live in a digital world now, which has led to an exponential influx of official government records being created and distributed in an electronic format.

Archivist Taylor Chase sitting in front of computer at the Born-Digital Workstation

Archivist Taylor Chase sitting at the Born-Digital Workstation

My position here at the Nevada State Archives plays a unique and vital role in preserving the electronic and born-digital records of our state’s government. In addition to working with analog records, I spend a lot of my time accessioning and transferring digital records to secured storage, processing and organizing the records, and ensuring that they will be accessible to state agencies and future researchers. These records include the electronic records of the State Agencies and Constitutional Officers (Governor, Secretary of State, etc.) of Nevada.

As the recipient of this SHRAB scholarship, I have dedicated the funds to beginning my journey toward becoming certified as a Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) through the Society of American Archivists. This program is designed to teach the applied knowledge, fundamentals, and tools needed to implement standardized electronic records practices. Over the course of 3 months, I successfully completed 4 DAS courses:

  1. Assessment & Certification of Digital Repositories
  2. Standards for Digital Archives
  3. Introduction to Processing Digital Records & Manuscripts
  4. Digital Preservation of Audio & Video

With 4 out of the 9 total courses to achieve the DAS Certificate fulfilled, this SHRAB scholarship has significantly advanced my education as a digital archivist. The courses that I have finished covered: the evaluation and implementation of assessment tools; standards supporting digital archiving functions and their applications; high-level overviews and tools for processing digital records; and detailed guides on audio visual conservation and digitization.

Knowledge gained from these courses helped lay the foundation for the State Archives to keep our state’s historical electronic records organized and secure, appropriately respond to electronic records requests in a reasonable amount of time, and provide other state agencies guidance on maintaining compliance with their records retention & disposition schedules pertaining to electronic records. As I continue my DAS certification journey, the State Archives’ capability to ingest, process, and preserve born-digital records will continue to grow with me.

Thank you to SHRAB for this wonderful opportunity that has allowed me to substantially advance my personal education and professional work experience in the digital archiving field. 


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