2021 was a year in which Wisconsin’s cultural heritage organizations continued to grapple with fewer resources, fewer staff hours, and less certainty about what the next day would look like. And, pandemic variants, staffing shortages, and budget reductions will continue to disrupt service for the foreseeable future.
Yet, the work of Recollection Wisconsin and our 240 consortium partners continues despite those obstacles. As our collection and community grew steadily this year, so did the use of the collection by teachers, students, researchers, local historians, and the curious general public. We brought aboard 14 new content partners, 23 new collections, and added nearly 70,000 resources in total to Recollection Wisconsin and DPLA. We saw a 13% increase in user views of the collection items over 2020 and a 52% increase over 2019.
We are proud of the work we have done this year to share and preserve a multitude of unique Wisconsin stories, to grow and support the community of people engaged in the work of digital historical collections, and to support teachers in history classrooms with resources to engage their students.
