We’re thrilled to announce a new initiative supporting Wisconsin local history organizations in their digitization work! The aptly-named Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative is a collaborative endeavor which brings together Wisconsin organizations with local history collections (public libraries, museums, archives, and local history or community organizations) and Wisconsin information school graduate students to digitize and publicly… Read More…
Content Partner Resources
Updates to the Digital Readiness Toolkit
Recollection Wisconsin has enhanced and expanded its Digital Readiness Toolkit to incorporate guidance and best practices on digitizing and sharing audiovisual content. These enhancements, a result of valuable contributions from the Community Archiving Workshop, include a comprehensive digital readiness self-assessment tool for your organization, a framework for prioritizing A/V materials for digitization, and in-depth guidance… Read More…
Film Inspection and Digitization Kits Available to Borrow
Recollection Wisconsin, in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, can loan a Film Inspection Kit for examining 8mm or 16mm film and a Wolverine Film Scanner for reformatting 8mm and Super8 film. Funding for the kits was provided by a grant to the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) from the Institute… Read More…
Recollection Wisconsin 2022 Year in Review
In 2022, Recollection Wisconsin prioritized planning for long-term financial sustainability. We know the services and expertise provided by Recollection Wisconsin are important to our individual partners and the state’s cultural heritage community and that without them, fewer organizations would be able to share their community’s history with the world. This year, in order to provide… Read More…
Recollection Wisconsin Discourages the Use of Prison Labor for Digitization
The Recollection Wisconsin Steering Committee offers the following recommendation on the use of prison labor for digitization. Background Libraries and cultural organizations are sometimes contacted by state corrections departments such as Oklahoma Correctional Industries (OCI) offering digitization services, particularly for high school yearbooks. These services, typically free or nearly so, may appeal to organizations that… Read More…
Preserving At-Risk Audiocassettes: A Case Study of the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, Wisconsin
This post was contributed by Bronwen Maseman, a Madison-based librarian, educator, consultant, and researcher. This case study is part of the Community Archiving Workshop Regional Training of Trainers program, funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant (RE-85-18-0039-18) in partnership with the Association of Moving Image… Read More…
New in Recollection Wisconsin, Spring 2022
This quarter, we added four new collections from both new and existing content partners! Milwaukee Public Library has been working hard on these two new collections: The CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) Arts Program Photographs collection includes photographs taken between February and May of 1976 in Milwaukee, documenting life during the 1976 Bicentennial. After… Read More…
The Toolkit: File Formats
The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: JPEG, WAVE, MOV, PDF – what do they all mean? Which should we use for things we’re digitizing? Digital file formats quickly give way to alphabet soup: JPEG, WAVE, MOV, PDF…Here are several… Read More…
Ready to toss those old phone books? Think again!
Phone books from the mid-century are crucial data sources for a new toolkit offered by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR): “Through the Cracks: Preventing Vapor Intrusion Exposure in Wisconsin and Keeping Children and Families Safe.” Libraries have a unique opportunity to support public health and… Read More…
Recollection Wisconsin 2021 Year in Review
2021 was a year in which Wisconsin’s cultural heritage organizations continued to grapple with fewer resources, fewer staff hours, and less certainty about what the next day would look like. And, pandemic variants, staffing shortages, and budget reductions will continue to disrupt service for the foreseeable future. Yet, the work of Recollection Wisconsin and our… Read More…
