Cara A. Howe has been named Syracuse University’s assistant archivist for the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives. Howe started her new position on March 16 and 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, totally 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.
She will interact with and assist family members, the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group, donors, Remembrance Scholars and applicants, and researchers; prepare and present talks to classes, alumni groups and professional associations; assist with development/fundraising efforts, including research and applications for grants; and attend Pan Am Flight 103-related meetings and functions.
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.
Included in the archives are more than 200 boxes of newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, information on trials, government documents, books, audio and videotapes, posters, exhibit materials, and items specific to individual victims. The scope of the archives was expanded in 2006 to include all 270 victims.
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 SU.
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.
