Syracuse University named Cara Howe, a recent graduate of the School of Information Studies (iSchool) as the assistant archivist for the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives. Starting on March, 16, 2011, she reports to Edward L. Galvin, director of archives and records management in the Division of the Office of the Chancellor.
In this role, she is responsible for day-to-day efforts involving the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives. The position is funded for five years, through donations by victims’ families and others touched by the tragedy.
Howe will work to reprocess the existing Pan Am 103 collections and process all future deposits, coordinate the digitization of the archives and monitor the website to provide increased web access by victims’ families and by scholars studying terrorism.
The Pan Am 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives is dedicated to the 270 men, women and children whose lives were lost in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. Thirty-five students studying abroad with SU were killed in this terrorist attack.
The Syracuse University Archives established this special archives in 1990 to bring together in one place materials generated regarding the disaster, make those materials available for research, and provide a place to personalize the SU students whose lives were lost—a place where their families can donate materials by or about them to let the world know in some way what has been lost by their deaths.
A native of Central New York, Howe is a graduate of Cazenovia Junior/Senior High School and received a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in legal studies from SUNY Geneseo. She earned a master’s degree in library and information sciences with a certificate of advanced study in cultural heritage preservation from the iSchool in 2011.
She worked as an intern, graduate assistant and then a temporary employee of Syracuse University Archives before assuming her new role. Howe has served as a consulting archivist for the Judaic Heritage Center of CNY in DeWitt. There, she crafted and implemented archives policies and procedures, and handled accessions, processing of collections and database records. She also worked on the New York State Documentary Heritage Program grant application on behalf of the Erie Canal Museum.