Hello, I’m Kristina Warner! I am starting my second year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the Information School specializing in archival management. This summer I am working with the Outagamie Waupaca Library System in Appleton, Wisconsin. The biggest projects that we are working on are creating a digital preservation policy, workflow and data management policy. The Outagamie Waupaca Library System, or OWLS for short, works alongside the Nicolet Federated Library System (NFLS) as OWLSnet — a partnership of public libraries serving Northeastern Wisconsin. This includes 54+ libraries covering 10 counties.
Eleven of these libraries have contributed digitized local history resources to the InfoSoup Memory Project. The number of libraries, geography, and different resources brings up an interesting and unique situation in regards to working towards a coordinated digital preservation policy. Since there is a combination of libraries who have previously contributed to the Memory Project, libraries who are continuing to digitize, and libraries looking to start digital projects, we have to be aware of different levels of expertise and different collection policies, and create policies that can be implemented by both local library staff and volunteers.
After working on an initial inventory of the existing digital collections, we decided that it is best to work directly with each individual site to walk through digitization best practices and basic digital preservation considerations. This will provide the libraries the chance to ask questions and address any concerns that they might have. Furthermore, after much deliberation, we felt that this was the best way to make a policy that will be implemented successfully. Since there are many libraries within these two library systems, we felt that it was best to start at the bottom and work our way up. So, by working with the member libraries personally and showing them how to curate their digital collections, we felt that this would make the process of managing the archival copies at OWLS easier.
While we still have a lot left to do and more decisions to make, I’m extremely excited to work closely with the member libraries to help them out and answer their questions. I have been communicating with the libraries and their enthusiasm and interest in this project is astounding. I am so happy to be working alongside these librarians who understand the importance of digital preservation and are willing to learn more about what they can do to better preserve these items.
— Posted by Kristina Warner
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.
