This is Colin McGinnis the Adult Services Manager at the McMillan Memorial Library. Our director, Andy Barnett, in coordination with the South Wood County Museum got us involved in this year’s Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC) project. I have enjoyed the process of getting reacquainted with digital collections. I had metadata for digital collections course in graduate school, where I indexed a photo collection and supplied metadata within Omeka, a collections management system.
Since that time, I haven’t had a chance to really use that knowledge, so I need to relearn many aspects and supplement that knowledge with digital preservation. I look forward to establishing our collection and maintaining it into the future. Both the museum and the library have a wealth of information that will have much broader access and attention after we get on the same page and have an index to our collections to compare.
The whole CCDC project is helping me get to know the people and collections at the museum much better. My first visit to their building was when our CCDC student, Dale Meinholz, came up to start the project and get to know what he was working with. We received a tour of the physical and digital collections.
We also received a reminder of the 3-2-1 principle when the radar suggested an intense storm was headed our way recently. Dale put off leaving until it passed and witnessed the dark clouds tumultuous arrival with gusts of wind whipping at the newly constructed concrete streets next to the library sending plumes of dust into the sky.
If we only had our digital files here in our building on one hard drive we would be susceptible to losing everything with one natural disaster, fire, theft, or accidental destruction of the medium. If the building is burning to the ground no one has to run in to try to save the historic digital archive—we just receive our off-site copy and keep building the collection into the future.
I’m excited to continue this process and look forward to all the great work and recommendations Dale will give us. The historic archive of the library and museum are going to be stronger, more durable, and more collaborative going forward.
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.
