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Recent Blog Posts
- 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).
- October 19, 2023
Recollection Wisconsin has enhanced and expanded its Digital Readiness Toolkit to incorporate guidance and best practices on digitizing and sharing audiovisual content. These enhancements, a result of valuable contributions from the Community Archiving Workshop, include a comprehensive digital readiness self-assessment tool for your organization, a framework for prioritizing A/V materials for digitization, and in-depth guidance tailored specifically to managing audiovisual collections. We’ve also updated and expanded the Digital Project Planning Worksheet, added support for choosing a Collection Management System and recommendations for digitization equipment, and incorporated requests for resources and information that practitioners have requested. This updated version is now available in ebook format, which offers a more user-friendly and interactive experience with easier access to the Toolkit’s valuable information.
- October 19, 2023
Examining a film strip, ca. 1950-ca. 1960. UW-Madison Archives. Recollection Wisconsin, in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, can loan a Film Inspection Kit for examining 8mm or 16mm film and a Wolverine Film Scanner for reformatting 8mm and Super8 film. Funding for the kits was provided by a grant to the  Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Kits are available to lend to any organization within the state of Wisconsin that is either 1) an affiliate of the Wisconsin Historical Society; 2) a WiLS general member; or 3) a Recollection Wisconsin content partner. The kits are free to borrow for up to two months or longer, if another organization has not requested it. Your organization will be responsible for picking up and returning the kit, or for the cost of shipping. There are limited grant funds available to cover shipping costs. Read more or fill out an interest form.