Meet the University Archivist: Alston Coburn

Hello!  I am Alston Cobourn, and I am proud to be East Carolina University’s new University Archivist as of July. I am from Raleigh and attended UNC-Chapel Hill where I earned my undergraduate degree in English with minors in Creative Writing and Journalism.  I worked in the Metadata and Cataloging department at NC State’s D.H. Hill Library for four years while completing my MLS also at Chapel Hill. During this time, I served as the chair of SNCA’s membership committee, which enabled me to meet many archival colleagues across the state.  After finishing my Masters, I moved to Virginia and worked as Digital Scholarship Librarian at Washington and Lee University, providing outreach about scholarly communications issues such as copyright, author’s rights, and open access to the campus community, leading an implementation of ArchivesSpace, and working with faculty and students on digital humanities projects.  From there I moved to Texas to assume the role of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Processing and Digital Assets Archivist.  I am deeply thankful for all of the awesome experiences those positions afforded me as they helped me develop professionally.  But, as the saying goes, there’s no place like home, so it is very exciting to be back in North Carolina and to be a part of this wonderful organization again.  I look forward to interacting with both familiar and new faces in the coming years.

Contact info: cobourna18@ecu.edu