The Student Organization Records Toolkit, or SORT, is designed to assist student organizations in developing their recordkeeping practices to preserve their group’s history by identifying significant documents and those that can be discarded, as well as best practices for storing, organizing and making them accessible.

Because students spend a relatively short amount of time on campus, SORT offers easy to use solutions for maintaining the organization’s history that can be passed down to future members. By implementing SORT and working with the University Archivist, you can be sure that your group’s accomplishments are being preserved as part of Lehigh's history.

Students are the fabric of the Lehigh community, but while University Archives has records of administrative and academic departments, student organizations are generally underrepresented. To ensure that the history of student life, as seen through the eyes of students and not administrators, faculty, or staff, is sufficiently documented, student organizations are encouraged to donate their inactive records to the University Archives. These records are essential to understand the history of Lehigh because they tell a story of the University that is missing from the official records.

The records of the student organizations make up an important part of the University Archives. The organizations include fraternities and sororities, honorary societies, and clubs.

The University Archives is a part of the University Library System that collects, preserves and makes accessible the papers, records, photographs and media that document the history and mission of Lehigh University.

While the University has been well documented through the records of the administration, faculty, colleges, academic departments and administrative offices, records that document the Lehigh student experience are not comprehensive. This problem might be solved by donating the historical records to the Archives. The primary concern of SORT is to advise students on the best practices of documenting their time at Lehigh for future generations.