The Toolkit Blog: Digital Projects Support

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…

Preserving At-Risk Acetate Reel to Reel Audio Recordings: A Case Study of the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire Special Collections and Archives

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…

Preserving At-Risk 16mm Acetate Films: A Case Study of the Milwaukee Public Museum

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…

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…

The Toolkit: Building Community Engagement

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: How do I build community participation in my digital project? Here are some ideas for building engagement with community members around your digital initiatives and organization’s work. Who? Think about the community group… Read More…

The Toolkit: Transcription Tips

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: How do I transcribe recordings? Here are some tips and resources for transcribing (and/or indexing) oral histories and other audio, video and film recordings, compiled from field experts.  What is transcription? This section… Read More…

The Toolkit: Wrapping Up a Digitization Project

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: My digitization project will end later this year. What do I need to do to wrap up this work? All good things must come to an end, right? Whether grant-funded or supported by… Read More…

The Toolkit: You asked, let’s chat!

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear. This month, we’re featuring a few frequently-asked questions posed by local history practitioners during our summer Digital Readiness Fairs. Any advice for getting started with a digitization project? How should we create metadata to allow a… Read More…

The Toolkit: Inheriting a Digital Project

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: Help! I inherited my organization’s digitization project and I don’t know where to start! Some of us have the luxury of building a digitization project or program from scratch. Others, though, take on… Read More…

The Toolkit: Four Simple Metadata Improvements

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: What quick or simple improvements can I make to my metadata to help users find what they need? Recollection Wisconsin is the collective effort of 240 libraries, historical societies, museums, and other historical… Read More…

The Toolkit: Content Statements

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: Should my institution include a content warning or statement on our digital collection website? What is a content statement? A content statement is a message on your digital collection website or within your… Read More…

The Toolkit: Digitizing Yearbooks

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: I’d like to digitize my community’s high school yearbooks, but I’m concerned about copyright, harmful content and privacy issues, especially if we add these to our online public collection. Who doesn’t love old… Read More…

The Toolkit: Recording Oral Histories

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: How do I record audio for my oral history project? Capturing the audio stories of community members’ lives is an excellent way to document and preserve history through the eyes of ordinary people…. Read More…

The Toolkit: Rights Statements

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: My digital collection is a mix of public domain and in-copyright materials. How will my users know what they can and can’t use? Generally speaking, until recently there haven’t been widely used standards… Read More…

The Toolkit: Buying a Scanner

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: What scanner should I buy? Unfortunately, there is no quick or easy answer. It really depends on individual project goals (and budget constraints!). The options available can be overwhelming – flatbed scanners, overhead… Read More…

The Toolkit: Thank You, Volunteers!

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: How can my organization more successfully engage and sustain a robust volunteer community? This month, we celebrate Volunteer Appreciation Week by recognizing how vital volunteers are to our Recollection Wisconsin content partners, many… Read More…

The Toolkit: Digitizing Indigenous Materials

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: Our institution has a collection of materials that are related to Indigenous communities of Wisconsin. We are interested in digitizing these materials. How should we go about this? As mentioned in the February… Read More…

The Toolkit: Can We Digitize and Put These Images Online? Should We?

The Toolkit brings together resources for creating, managing, and sharing digital collections to address common concerns we often hear, like this one: Our library has a collection of photographs that shows the people, places, and events of our town. The earliest photographs are probably from the early 1900s and the most recent date to the 1970s…. Read More…

The Toolkit: Three Resolutions for Better File Management in 2020

Recollection Wisconsin’s Digital Projects Toolkit brings together guidelines, tools and resources for creating, managing and sharing digital collections. In this monthly series, we’ll address some common questions and concerns we often hear from libraries, archives and museums tackling digital work. Have a question you’d like answered? Contact us! To kick things off, we’ll take a… Read More…