We’ve been on the road this fall, promoting Recollection Wisconsin and our projects that champion digital stewardship of local history resources –- Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC) and Listening to War: Digitizing Wisconsin’s Wartime Oral Histories. Here’s a recap of our adventures!
We rolled into La Crosse, Wisconsin on October 24th for the 2018 Wisconsin Library Association conference – Excite. Ignite. Invite. Flanked and fortified by our excellent colleagues from “Camp WiLS,” Vicki Tobias and Emily Pfotenhauer shared information about both CCDC and Listening to War with conference attendees who stopped at our table to chat about Recollection Wisconsin, digitization work and CCDC 2019.
The following day, Year One CCDC participants Amanda Lee, Host Site supervisor at OWLS in Appleton, and students Jodi Kiffmeyer, Steve Moray and Kristina Warner shared their experiences during our panel presentation, Curating Community Digital Collections: Collaborating to Build Digital Capacity. It was especially gratifying to hear their personal reflections on work accomplished, the value of digital stewardship for small, under-resourced institutions, and how they and their host institutions will remain engaged in this work.
WiLS Audiovisual Project Archivist Shawn Vesely represented our programs at the Wisconsin Local History Annual Conference in Elkhart Lake. Shawn staffed the Recollection Wisconsin table in the Town Hall Exhibit on October 26th and 27th, answering questions and exchanging ideas about oral history creation and preservation with conference attendees. Common discussion topics included oral history best practices, legal issues (release forms!), audio digitization and developing oral history projects for high school students, as well as general inquiries about Recollection Wisconsin and digital collections. Oral history work and storytelling, in general, are trending program areas for cultural heritage institutions, libraries and museums.
CCDC Program Coordinator Vicki Tobias traveled south to Chicago on November 1 to introduce CCDC to Creating Community through Digital Futures conference attendees. This one-day “un-conference” offered a wide range of short presentations and lightening talks that focused on digital stewardship work. The morning Project Showcase included Vicki’s talk, An Introduction to Curating Community Digital Collections, after which attendees engaged in discussion about sustainable digital preservation work, graduate student project work and additional training for small intuitions interested in starting a digital preservation project.
In addition to learning about CCDC, representatives from greater Chicagoland institutions introduced tools and workflows that facilitate digital collection development and preservation, NDSA preservation levels, collaborate project work, “DIY preservation,” CollectiveAccess, and audiovisual preservation best practices. A lively and engaged group of participants exchanged ideas during breaks. The future of digital preservation work is in good hands with these folks leading the charge.
Finally, Recollection Wisconsin Program Manager Emily Pfotenhauer headed to Boston on November 9 to participate in “Building the Community: A Digital Preservation Symposium,” hosted by the Northeast Document Conservation Center. This event was a wrapup of NEDCC’s NEH-funded work over the past two years to prepare and present a collaborative Digital Preservation Assessment training program. Emily’s presentation positioned CCDC as a model for offering digital preservation assessment and training to very small organizations, particularly volunteer-driven museums and archives.
Curating Community Digital Collections is supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. Listening to War is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
