Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:36:40 -0500 From: Debbie Cardinal <cardinal@wils.wisc.edu> Subject: WHO News #17 Message-id: <D34841AAA3314DCB8F2FC6C4E9A7FAE2@OCLCA>
Wisconsin Heritage Online News
October 2010 #17
CONTENTS
News of <http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#news#news> the
Day
Featured
<http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#collections#collections>
Collections
Project
<http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#projectnews#projectnews>
News
WHO
<http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#resourceswiki#resourceswi
ki> Resources
Events <http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#events#events> to
Note
News of the Day
Harvesting Resumes!
We are excited to announce that by the end of 2010 approximately twenty
Wisconsin digital collections will have their metadata harvested into the
WHO portal <http://wisconsinheritage.org/> . There are another eight to
twelve collections that will be harvested into WHO as time allows, for a
total of thirty-two new digital collections added by early 2011! The initial
six weeks of harvesting work by the University of Wisconsin - Madison
Libraries Shared Development Group will include nine new Wisconsin Heritage
Online projects hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library. We'll send out an
email announcement with details of the collections when the harvest is
completed.
Milwaukee Public Library celebration
Milwaukee Public Library
WHO Collections Added to CONTENTdm Collection of Collections
The CONTENTdm Collection of Collections
<http://collections.contentdm.oclc.org/index.php> is a searchable database
of collection level records for digital collections all over the world
representing historical societies, libraries, archives and museums. Some
records represent individual collections; some connect you to entire digital
libraries.
It's a wonderful resource for learning what other institutions have
digitized, how unique materials in your collection may be, and how others
decided to organize their project. We have begun cataloging WHO-hosted
projects into the Collection of Collections. When you go to the Browse
<http://collections.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm4/browse.php> page, and type
"Wisconsin" in the search box at the top right, you'll retrieve a list of 36
collections. This list contains digital collections cataloged by a variety
of CONTENTdm license holders in Wisconsin. For Wisconsin Heritage Online
collections hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library (WHO-hosted), there are
records for Digital Museum of the Portage, South Wood County Historical
Corporation, Richland County Digital History Room and Preservation Racine,
Inc., and Blanchardville Local History Publications. We are adding all the
WHO-hosted collections over the next few months.
Digital Museum at the Portage
IMLS Awards Over $2 Million to Native American Tribes
for Enhancements to Library Service
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has announced that out
of 46 applicants nation-wide, 17 Native American tribal communities were
chosen to receive $2,030,562 in Native American Library Services Enhancement
grants. Ten of these grantees are first time awardees. To see a full list of
Enhancement grant recipients, click here
<http://www.imls.gov/news/2010/090710b_list.shtm> .
This year's grantees include the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, who
received $74,520 for their proposal to digitize archival records from the
tribe's struggle for sovereignty in the mid-20th century.
The Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin will work with the College of Menominee
Nation Library Special Collections Department and Wisconsin Heritage Online
to house, preserve, catalog, and digitize a large collection of rare and
historically significant archival materials, many relating directly to the
personal, legal, and national story of the Menominee Tribe's struggle for
sovereignty during the Termination and Restoration period from 1954 to 1973.
Project activities will increase online access to these rare documents for
the Menominee community, College of Menominee Nation faculty, staff, and
students, as well as for public and scholarly research, adding to a greater
understanding of the impact tribes felt from the federal termination policy.
Featured Collections
The InfoSoup Memory Project InfoSoup
The Outagamie Waupaca Library System (OWLS) is using CONTENTdm to provide
access to the wealth of local history resources available in OWLSnet member
libraries through the InfoSoup Memory Project <http://memory.infosoup.org/>
.
So far, the Appleton Public Library, Clintonville Public Library, and
Kaukauna Public Library have added collections to the InfoSoup Memory
Project, and staff and volunteers from more than ten libraries have attended
training sessions to learn how.
Recent additions to the collection include three issues of the Clintonville
Town Talk newspaper from 1905, an issue of the Clintonville Times from 1892,
an industrial review of Clintonville from 1898, an industrial review of
Kaukauna from 1939, and a history of the streets of Kaukauna from 1931.
According to the Clintonville Times of February 19, 1892, "Mr. and Mrs. C.F.
Schroeder were agreeably surprised by a party of friends, Tuesday evening,"
and "Miss Meda Stein from Oshkosh and her sister from Greenville are at
home." It seems that Facebook did not invent the status update!
The project is still in its early stages. We hope to add continually
photographs and documents from our libraries' collections. Check back often!
Contributed by Bradley Shipps, Outagamie Waupaca Library System
Creating Communities: Digitizing Denver's Historic Neighborhoods
creating communities
Thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the
Denver Public Library, in partnership with the City of Denver, History
Colorado, University of Colorado at Denver Auraria Library, and the
University of Denver Penrose Library, is bringing together historic
resources and digitized archival materials on "Creating Communities Online".
Built on OCLC's CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software, Creating
Communities offers information on Denver neighborhoods from official records
of the City and County of Denver and partner institutions all through an
easy-to-navigate online <http://creatingcommunities.denverlibrary.org/>
resource.
Neighborhood Histories
As part of Creating Communities, the Denver Public Library digitized
photographs, maps and documents from seven of Denver's historic
neighborhoods. For each of the seven featured neighborhoods in the
Neighborhood Histories section of the site, they have gathered resources
highlighting the people, places and diverse community that shaped each
neighborhood's unique history.
They also mapped a number of Building History resources, such as assessor
records and national and state historic buildings, on a Google map, and if
you just feel like browsing around they have a vast collection of digitized
archival materials in their collections.
myDenver
Another unique feature of Creating Communities is myDENVER. Here users are
encouraged to upload photographs, share stories, add comments and connect
with the Denver community.
the Colorado Governor's Mansion
Iowa County Historical Society
Earlier this month WHO Outreach Specialist Emily Pfotenhauer headed to
Dodgeville to meet with Boyd Geer and Eileen Arndt of the Iowa County
Historical Society. Earlier this year, ICHS was awarded a mini-grant from
the Wisconsin Historical Society to purchase digitization equipment,
including a shiny new scanner and a one-terabyte external hard drive.
They're now ready to start sharing their photos and other archives on the
web through Wisconsin Heritage Online.
The first collection ICHS will digitize is a group of postcards collected by
local resident Herb Harris. The postcards show a variety of street scenes
and buildings, providing a look at the development and growth of Dodgeville
from the 1910s-1950s.
With Emily on the trip to Dodgeville was Erin Kauppinen, an undergraduate
student in the Art History department at UW-Madison. Erin studies
architectural history and material culture and will help ICHS to research
and catalog the postcards. One of the main things Erin will focus on is
assigning dates to the postcards. Some of the dates should be easy to
determine, like a street scene with the movie marquee featuring Bette Davis
in "The Great Lie". Others will take more digging to narrow down a possible
date range.
Look for the Iowa County Historical Society's postcards online by the end of
this year!
Preservation Racine, Inc.
Preservation Racine Digital Library
Four decades of newsletters distributed by Preservation Racine, Inc. are now
fully searchable online. Since 1976, Preservation Racine, Inc. has published
a newsletter documenting historic preservation efforts in Racine County as
well as the organization's annual Tour of Historic Buildings and Century
Homes events. Archivist Anna Stadick of the UW-Parkside Archives and Area
Research Center facilitated the scanning of the newsletters by UW-Parkside
students and Sharon Baldukas, Preservation Racine's historian, assigned
metadata for each issue. The digital
<http://content.mpl.org/preservationracine> collection was developed with
support from Wisconsin Heritage Online under the Nicholas Family Foundation
Outreach and Training Grant and is hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library.
Making Your Digital Collection User Friendly
Cataloging and metadata are the topic here! You probably think this won't be
user friendly. But, I do hope it will be. I'm highlighting two Wisconsin
Heritage Online collections in this article. The Richland County History
Room has done a magnificent job of creating and using controlled vocabulary
lists and a general established subject heading tool to make their image
collection both orderly and searchable. The Wisconsin Decorative Arts
Database uses a different subject heading thesaurus and a thorough
description of the item to make the collection material highly retrievable.
The Richland <http://content.mpl.org/rchr> County History Room, part of the
Brewer Public Library, Richland Center, has been featured in a past
newsletter. They are building a growing collection of photographs and
postcards recording the history of Richland County. History Room staffer
Crystal Foley spent several weeks preparing lists of reusable words and
phrases to use in cataloging the images. She entered information about each
image into Excel, using dropdown lists of her prepared controlled
vocabulary. If you're wondering what this means, I'll explain. Since all of
her material is from or relates to Richland County, she prepared a list of
township names as well as a list of villages and towns. She also prepared a
list of family names since much of the material in the Richland County
History Room has been donated by local families. She cross-checked family
name spellings, as well as given names for identifying people in the
photographs. Since she had been working on cataloging the photographs for a
couple of years, she also prepared a list of local subject terms. All of
these lists, simply typed and saved as unformatted text files, took some
time to compose as well as to verify spelling, but once completed, oh, the
time they save! Since she added the lists to her Excel spreadsheet as a
dropdown list, when she catalogs she needs only to type the first two or
three characters and the list pops up. She doesn't need to worry about
spelling, or about typing mistakes. Other people too can enter data since
the information that is most used is readily available. In fact, students
from a history class at UW-Richland regularly work on cataloging the images.
Controlled vocabulary means that for Crystal's project the words and phrases
were chosen specifically and then applied without variation. Use of
controlled vocabulary applied lists prevents misspellings and variations in
terms.
WWI soldier in uniform, Tracy Martin
WWI soldier in uniform, Tracy Martin
In the second project, the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database
<http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/index_wda.php?CISOROOT=/wda> ,
Emily Pfotenhauer also made use of a standard controlled vocabulary. In
addition, she thoroughly described, in a free text field, the images she
added to the database. The use of standardized language, controlled
vocabulary, allows items in the same or different collections to be brought
together when a researcher enters a search. In many content management
systems those controlled terms are highlighted in the data record, so a
researcher can click on terms and retrieve more or fewer items easily. On
the other hand, complete description in an uncontrolled field area allows
people to use natural language and retrieve something in a search. Standards
terms used in the record, but unfamiliar to the researcher can be used to
expand the retrieved items.
I've been teasing Emily that no matter what search I enter into the
Wisconsin Heritage Online search box, whether I search beer, or cows, or
lions, or cheese, I always retrieve one or more item from the decorative
arts database. Emily says this is because material culture is woven into
every aspect of life. I say it's because she took the time to enter into the
descriptive record about each item all she knew about it, making it possible
for people to search anything they know about their topic and get something
back.
Mt. Horeb Historical Society
Mount Horeb Area
Historical Society
WHO Resources
Social Networking Tools
Our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/WisconsinHeritage, now has over one
hundred friends and we'd like to have more! Share our posts with your
friends; link your Facebook account to ours to help spread the word. We use
our Facebook page to share stories, such as trips to prospective digital
content providers, interesting material from our content providers, and to
share images from all kinds of collections that relate to a historical
moment or a current event. It's a lot fun!
Wisconsin Heritage Online also has a Twitter account. We post very short
bits of news, usually with a URL to a fuller account of the news item. We
have close to 500 followers on Twitter, twitter.com/wiheritage.
Check out the sharing tools we've installed on each of the WHO collections
hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library. Cathy Markwiese and Kevin Cingatura
at Milwaukee Public Library have added to each image page. This is how it
works: when you find an image you'd like others to see, hover over the Share
button. A list of sharing tools will pop up. You can click on one (my
favorites are Facebook and Email) and post that specific image immediately.
It's very easy!
Don't forget about our WHO Resources Wiki. We try to keep the information on
the wiki up-to-date and relevant. When we make a significant change to
either the page content or to a document, we try to date the page so you'll
know it's new. I don't believe anyone needs to check the wiki even every
week but it's certainly worth a visit once a month. Here's the URL:
wilsnet-wiheritage.pbworks.com <https://wilsnet-wiheritage.pbworks.com/> .
Check the sidebar on the right to see if items have a recent date. Recently,
I added four lists of railroad terminology to the Encoding Schemas page
under Metadata. If you're working on or planning a digital project of
railroad related material, you should check out these lists.
It might be that you've forgotten your password; if so, click on the Forgot
Your Password link and your password will be reset.
Events to Note
Fall Genealogy Classes
With the increased interest in genealogy via shows like "Who Do You think
You Are" and the use of Ancestry Library Edition at most public libraries,
the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin State Genealogical Society
are offering classes that are geared to the beginner but valuable to
intermediate researchers as well. There are a lot of options for learning
more about genealogical research this Fall. Online and library/archives
materials will be discussed to give a more complete picture of the various
resources available to the family historian.
See class listings at www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/classes
<http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/classes/>
Contributed by Lori B. Bessler
Reference Librarian and Outreach Coordinator
Wisconsin Historical Society Library and Archives
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To Top <http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/whonews17.html#begin#begin>
Principal writer and editor, Debbie Cardinal <mailto:cardinal@wils.wisc.edu>
. Contributions from Emily
<epfotenhauer@wils.wisc.edu">http://www.wils.wisc.edu/email/WHO/epfotenhauer@wils.wisc.edu>
Pfotenhauer.
Wisconsin Heritage <http://wisconsinheritage.org/> Online | Wisconsin
<http://wilsnet-wiheritage.pbworks.com/> Heritage wiki
<http://www.facebook.com/WisconsinHeritage> Facebook WHO
<http://twitter.com/wiheritage> WHO Twitter
Debbie Cardinal
Wisconsin Heritage Online Program Manager
<mailto:cardinal@wils.wisc.edu> cardinal@wils.wisc.edu
608 265-2138
Project Resources site: http://wiheritage.pbworks.com/
<http://wiheritage.pbwiki.com/> <http://wiheritage.pbwiki.com/>
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