And…we’re off and running! Curating Community Digital Collections 2019 participants kicked off their summer projects at our digital preservation immersion workshop in Madison, Wisconsin, May 21-23.
Over the course of three days, our ten teams were introduced to digital preservation foundation concepts and best practices. 30+ students, host site supervisors, and mentors learned about workflows to support all phases of a digital preservation project including inventory creation, file and folder organization and naming conventions, file integrity checking, and storage and backup plans, and hands-on training with a few tools to support this work including Fixity and Advanced Renamer. To quote one participant, “You have to know what you have, why you have it, where and what it is before you can decide what to do with it.” Well stated. We couldn’t agree more.
AVP Senior Consultant and CCDC trainer, Amy Rudersdorf, shared her wealth of knowledge related to all-things-digital preservation. We’re grateful to have her on team CCDC! On day three, our mentors joined the students and host site supervisors for some intense project planning time.
In addition to digital preservation training, workshop guests shared their expertise in short presentations. Topics included “Working with Volunteers and Managing Technology Changes” (Amy Meyer, Manitowoc County Historical Society), “How to Talk to IT about Digital Preservation” (Scott Prater, UW Digital Collections Center), “Oral Histories and Storytelling Projects” (Paul Hedges, Wisconsin Historical Society), “Digitization Best Practices and Standards” (Jesse Henderson, UW Digital Collections Center) and “An Introduction to DPLA and Recollection Wisconsin” (Emily Pfotenhauer, Recollection Wisconsin). We threw a ton of information at our participants, but they dug in and quickly mastered concepts with good humor and excellent questions. It was a flurry of learning, to be sure but I’m confident our digital assets are in good hands.
Stay tuned for blog posts from our CCDC students and host site supervisors throughout the summer. We’re looking forward to following their project progress!
For more information about Curating Community Digital Collections, visit https://recollectionwisconsin.org/digipres. This project is made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, #RE-85-17-0127-17.
