We are excited to announce our next Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative cohort starting in late May 2025. This initiative brings together Wisconsin content partners and information school graduate students to create new digital collections. Content partners will choose collections to digitize, and student staff will handle the digitization and metadata work as part of a paid practicum or independent study experience. These digitized collections will be added to Recollection Wisconsin in the coming months.
Summer 2025 participants
- McKenzie Weaver (SOIS, Archives Certificate Program) at Racine Public Library with Rebecca Leannah, adult services supervisor and local history librarian. Project: Digitizing historic postcards, yearbooks, church histories and directories, and city directories.
- Ceceilia Loeschmann (SOIS) at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) with Maren Knutson, grant manager, Monica Miller, collections and gallery director and Steven Anderson, exhibitions and collections manager. Project: Digitizing the Grassel Collection.
- Kayla Hernandez (SOIS) at America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) with Mia Phifer, senior education, collections, & outreach coordinator. Project: Milwaukee Community Journal content and digitizing photos and editorials that document founder Dr. James Cameron’s work with the ABHM.
- Elisabeth Primrose (SOIS) at the Tomah Area Historical Society & Museum with Leah Clipner Watson, assistant museum director, Jim Weinzatl, museum executive director, and Deb Chesser, museum volunteer coordinator and Tomah Historic Preservation Commission member. Project: Digitizing the Frank King Collection. King was a cartoonist, the creator of Gasoline Alley, and from Tomah, Wisconsin.
Throughout the summer, student interns will be scanning materials, creating metadata and project documentation, and uploading digitized collections to CONTENTdm. This hands-on opportunity invites future information professionals to apply theory in practice. All participants will receive training and ongoing support from Recollection Wisconsin staff, including resources in the Digital Readiness Toolkit.
Our initiative aligns with a key Recollection Wisconsin strategic goal for 2023-2025: collaborating with organizations in non-participating Wisconsin counties and underrepresented community groups to expand participation in Recollection Wisconsin, resulting in new stories and historical records that document our state’s rich history.
Welcome, summer cohort participants. We’re excited to work with you to digitize, share, and preserve Wisconsin’s local history resources! Much gratitude to our partners at the UW-Milwaukee SOIS and UW-Madison iSchool and the state of Wisconsin for financial support enabling this opportunity in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, and Summer 2025.
For further details, visit Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative or contact Vicki Tobias at vicki@wils.org.
