This week we launched a new and improved central search interface for Recollection Wisconsin digital collections. Through this new search, you can find state and local history resources as well as materials from across the country and around the world, all from the collections of dozens of Wisconsin libraries, archives, historical societies and museums.
This new interface was created for us as a benefit of Recollection Wisconsin’s partnership with the Digital Public Library of America. In fact, Wisconsin is the first DPLA member in the country to launch a “DPLA Local” site. The search portal uses the same code DPLA developed for their own dp.la portal, which means our users can benefit from handy features like auto-generated citations and the option to save custom lists.
The new search also uncovers resources about Wisconsin from other DPLA contributors around the country. For example, did you know that the New York Public Library has a great collection of stereographs of the Wisconsin Dells, photographed by H. H. Bennett? Or that the National Archives holds thousands of photos of Wisconsin landscapes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture?
The DPLA Local interface replaces the search portal created for us in 2005 by UW-Madison Libraries. We are grateful to UW-Madison for their many years of support to centralize access to Wisconsin’s digital collections and for their continued quarterly metadata harvests to update and refresh the data in the new system.
Give our new search a try and let us know what you think!
