Hi! I’m Jessica Behrman, and I am about to enter my second year at the Information School at UW-Madison. My practicum this summer is with the La Crosse Public Library Archives, where I’m working on creating workflows for digital photograph ingestion, migrating existing content into new digital collections, and implementing quality control measures going forward. One of the most exciting aspects of my practicum is creating the new digital collections from existing photos located on the Archives’ server.
The LPL Archives is the archival repository for all city records, but they also contain a large amount of content related to genealogy and local history. I had never been to La Crosse before embarking on this experience, so something I noticed immediately upon coming into town was the architecture! La Crosse is peppered with Queen Anne houses, Prairie Style homes, and Victorians, among others. The city of La Crosse is home to four districts (three residential, one commercial) that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As a former interior design major, my interests were definitely piqued. La Crosse is truly a great city to walk around and sight see in, and this is very much reflected in the photograph collections in the LPL Archives.
In doing my inventory for the digital photo collection, I ran across a plethora of 19th and early 20th century photos of buildings, homes, and downtown intersections that are still around today. It’s an interesting comparison to our present day. The archives have many photos of men, women, and children in turn-of-the-century attire on their lawns, sitting on porches, or walking downtown surrounded by the same houses and buildings that are currently being lived and worked in today.
Finding historic gems such as these photographs is what drew me to doing my practicum with Curating Community Digital Collections. I wanted to help an organization preserve memories and dive into how my host site can keep these important and essential artifacts for as long as possible. In addition to recommending digital preservation strategies and creating workflows, I will also begin the process of organizing digital photograph collections into a more cohesive and accessible format. This will allow residents of La Crosse (and anyone wanting to perform research in the archives) to access many photos that were previously unavailable or difficult to locate.
For anyone interested in exploring the architectural history of La Crosse, check out Footsteps of La Crosse, which explores the architectural history of the city through digital tours.
Below are some of my most favorite photos I’ve run across in the collections thus far. I’m excited to keep digging into the digital photo collections at the LPL Archives!
— Posted by Jessica Behrman
Curating Community Digital Collections is supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, #RE-85-17-0127-17. Meet all of the students in the 2018 CCDC cohort here.
