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Home > Partner with Us > Content Partner Resources > Recollection Wisconsin Content Partner Update Archive
Recent Blog Posts
- May 11, 2026
Canning, ca. 1948-1952.South Wood County Historical Museum. PreserveWI, Wisconsin’s statewide digital preservation program, is moving into its next chapter. Digital preservation – the long-term, monitored storage of digital cultural heritage materials – is an essential but often underfunded part of any digitization program, and PreserveWI exists to make it achievable through shared statewide infrastructure. This collaborative initiative between Recollection Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC) is transitioning Wisconsin’s preservation infrastructure away from mirrored servers hosted at South Central Library System (SCLS) and LEANWI and into APTrust, a trusted consortium-based digital preservation service hosted at the University of Virginia and in continuous operation since 2012. This transition represents a long-term investment in a sustainable, shared digital preservation ecosystem for Wisconsin’s digital cultural heritage. This next phase builds directly on years of foundational LSTA-funded work by the WPLC digital preservation workgroup, which included piloting workflows, testing infrastructure, and onboarding participating library systems. That knowledge and experience will carry forward into PreserveWI’s work with APTrust. In this next phase, Recollection Wisconsin serves as the central administrator, managing day-to-day operations and contributor support, while WPLC provides governance and strategic oversight. APTrust membership officially begins July 1, 2026. Training for the first cohort of participating library systems is already underway, with the remaining systems coming on through the fall, and full operational launch is on track for the end of 2026. Not at a participating library system, or not a library at all? Future phases of the program will open participation to additional libraries and cultural heritage organizations through Recollection Wisconsin’s umbrella membership, so there will be a place for your institution yet. If you’re digitizing materials and wondering where they’ll live for the long haul, stay tuned!
- October 10, 2024
Recollection Wisconsin invites you to join a FREE four-month learning group to learn the fundamentals of digital project planning, creating, and maintaining digital collections. In collaboration with WebJunction, participants will complete eight modules on digital collections stewardship and come together virtually every other week for four months to discuss concepts and projects. FREE!This program is generously funded by a grant to WebJunction from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Course structureCourse material is self-paced and available online. Participants will meet virtually twice a month for four months for guided discussions on the modules. Who is eligible?Volunteers and employees of Wisconsin libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, or cultural organizations. You do not need any prior digitization experience to participate! Timeline January 2025: Introduction & Community-Centered Approach to Digital Collections February 2025: Preparing & Gathering March 2025: Digitizing & Enhancing April 2025: Saving & Sharing Apply by November 15 to participate! Email info@recollectionwisconsin.org with any questions. We look forward to learning with you!
- April 11, 2024
We’re thrilled to announce a new initiative supporting Wisconsin local history organizations in their digitization work! The aptly-named Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative is a collaborative endeavor which brings together Wisconsin organizations with local history collections (public libraries, museums, archives, and local history or community organizations) and Wisconsin information school graduate students to digitize and publicly share new collections via Recollection Wisconsin. We invite new content partners with a desire to digitize and share their unique local history collections to apply for this program! We’ll help you hone your project plan and prepare your work environment. And, we’ll pair you with an information school graduate student to get the work done. Selected students will complete a range of digitization-related tasks including scanning, metadata creation, project management and documentation, and digital file organization and management. Student participants will receive a stipend and academic credit for their work. We’re excited to offer this hands-on opportunity for Wisconsin graduate students (and future information professionals!) to put theory into practice! As part of an ongoing commitment to expanding our collection focus, we’re particularly interested in adding new resources that document lesser-known stories about Wisconsin history and the people who have inhabited our great state including Native, immigrant and LGBTQ communities; women’s stories; and, in general, materials that document unique aspects of Wisconsin business, industry, tourism, cities and architecture, natural landscape and resources or military veterans. Digitized collections will be hosted and publicly accessible in Recollection Wisconsin. Content partners will receive a copy of their digital files and metadata for their own use. The Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative helps us reach one of our key strategic goals for 2023-2025: targeted outreach to organizations in non-participating Wisconsin counties and in other underrepresented community groups. Expanding participation in Recollection Wisconsin means more stories told and more historical records available documenting our state’s rich history. A familiar face rejoins our team to lead this initiative. As project manager, Vicki Tobias will work closely with selected host sites to plan and organize their digitization project ideas. Students and content partners will receive basic training in digitization best practices, digital preservation, collection development, and metadata creation. We’re equally excited to make good use of resources and training materials created as part of recent Recollection Wisconsin community-based and collaborative learning, and digital curation projects including Curating Community Digital Collections, Digital Readiness Community of Practice, and our very favorite training resource, the Digital Readiness Toolkit! Thanks to support from the state of Wisconsin (On, Wisconsin!), we are able to offer this opportunity in Fall 2024, Spring 2025 and Summer 2025. Beyond 2025? Opportunities will depend on future budget decisions, so if you love this program, we’ll be asking for your help in advocating for continued funding! Visit Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative for more information or contact Vicki Tobias (vicki@wils.org).
