When Edward Galvin joined the Archives and Records Management Department 15 years ago, there were about 25 boxes filled with papers and materials on the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing that killed 35 Syracuse University students. 

‘We now have over 200 boxes of material related to Pan Am 103,’ said Galvin, the archives office’s director. The collection has become too much for the office’s archivists to sort through, in addition to their other duties.

With an increase in funds — and nearly 22 years after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988 — the Archives and Records Management Department is looking for an archivist to handle all documents specifically about the bombing. 

SU created a Pan Am Flight 103 archive in 1990 to link materials from the disaster, make them open for research and provide a place for parents to donate materials or documents about their children, according to the SU Archives website. 

The archives office did not have a Pan Am archivist before because it did not have the money to pay for the position, Galvin said. But the archives office has been raising money for seven years to bring in $2 million for an endowment fund that could generate enough money to pay for the position, Galvin said. 

The archives office did not reach the $2 million goal but decided it still had enough money to hire the archivist, Galvin said. He did not specify how much money the office had raised. 

Galvin said there is no way the archive staff could keep up with its regular duties and manage all the growing Pan Am Flight 103 records.

Some of the duties the future archivist will have include coordinating the digitization of the archives, interacting with family members of victims and Remembrance Scholars, presenting to classes and attending functions related to Pan Am Flight 103, according to SU’s online employment website.

The archives office is looking to hire someone with a master’s degree in archival studies, library science or history for the Pan Am archivist position, Galvin said. 

‘One of the intangible things is somebody that can deal well with a grief-based collection,’ he said. 

The Pan Am archive is not the same as an archive about sports or a faculty member, so there are special circumstances that need to be dealt with, Galvin said.  

‘It’s very difficult for a number of these families to let go of these materials,’ Galvin said. ‘Whomever we hire is going to have to be somebody that can get to know the families well and care about them the way that the university does as a whole.’

It is important to have a central location that houses all of the Pan Am Flight 103 materials, said Ronald Cavanagh, a religion professor who was the vice president for undergraduate studies when the crash occurred.

‘There was a whole roller coaster of emotions at that time. It was like no day I’ve ever gone through’ he said.

Cavanagh made direct calls to the families that lost their children, as he was one of the liaisons between the parents of the students who were killed and SU, he said. 

‘This was a historic event for the United States,’ he said. ‘To have an archive where people in the future can go back and take a look at the materials from that day is special and important.’  

ddherrin@syr.edu

Published on November 30, 2010 at 12:00 pm