These goals inform our past planning, current work and eventual evaluation to measure program success.

1. Program-level goals
   • Tangible return on funding and Wisconsin taxpayers support. Support Wisconsin higher education institutions and their students, future Wisconsin information professionals, and Wisconsin libraries, archives, museums and local history organizations, and their staff and communities served.
   • Cohort-based programs, community building opportunities. Leverage our deep experience and past projects facilitating cohort-based programs, digitization projects, community-building around digital curation work.
   • Relationship building. Build new and invest in existing relationships with Wisconsin libraries, archives, museums and other local history organizations including partnerships with Wisconsin Native Nations.
   • Continued use and value of past Recollection Wisconsin or WiLS-supported projects. Utilize data and build on results from our recent gap analysis project. Use the Digital Readiness Toolkit, Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC) training materials and WiLSWorld Shorts content for training and cohort continuing education. Utilize content created for Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums (TLAM) projects and Culture Keepers Collective and build on past work in this area.
     
2. Collection goals
   • Provide access to new or lesser represented types of collections including subject areas, materials format, or types of content partner organizations. Targeted outreach to local history organizations seeking new content and materials that illuminate hidden histories or previously untold stories.
   • Address content and content partner gaps. Eight Wisconsin counties are not currently represented as content partners in Recollection Wisconsin. Close that gap through targeted outreach to those counties. Endeavor to include stories of under-represented communities including women’s stories, people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and lesser-known stories of Wisconsin small businesses, industries, tourism and recreation, innovation, landscape and community history, and more.
     
3. Content partner goals
   • Onboard new Recollection Wisconsin content partners. Invite and nurture new participation. Eliminate barriers to participation by supporting paid student interns to complete digitization work.
   • Build sustainable workflows and systems to provide more hands-on support for future digitization work. Help content partners continue their work beyond participation in this Initiative through creation of good project documentation for future staff and encouraging ongoing relationships with Wisconsin information graduate programs to facilitate future intern placements.
   • Create new connections. Build new partnerships including those between new and existing content partners to facilitate cooperative learning and support. Draw on experiences and continue growing relationships with individuals and organizations that participated in past Recollection Wisconsin initiatives including our Digital Readiness Community of Practice.
     
4. Student goals
   • Encourage students as thought-leaders. Encourage students to share their current learning and experience with their host site staff and Recollection Wisconsin community members.
   • Support student learning and career development through paid experiences for credit.
   • Provide well organized and relevant experiential learning opportunities. Work closely with graduate student staff to understand student learning goals and gaps. Work closely with potential host sites to develop projects that meet their needs. Think about how to build projects for students completing online programs or living in more remote parts of Wisconsin.
   • Grow relationships with Wisconsin information graduate program staff. Actively participate in events and communication related to student experiential learning at UW-Madison iSchool and UW-Milwaukee SOIS.
   • Share our knowledge and expertise related to digital curation work. Provide additional learning through weekly readings, tutorials, and other foundation resources created or curated by Recollection Wisconsin staff. Create an supportive and open learning environment that values inquisition and collaborative learning.

Questions? For additional program or application information, contact vicki@wils.org or visit Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative.