Digitization

McLeod County Historical Society uses Past Perfect Museum Software on its network computer system, like many small historical museums. In the last three years we have been adding a tremendous amount of digital media, i.e. photos and recordings, to the system. This has created some storage and backup problems for us. My board would like to explore the option of offsite memory storage, and was wondering if any other organizations have done this or have looked into it. 

Thanks,
Lori Pickell-Stangel
Executive Director

1 Comment »

At the Minnesota Digital Library conference on June 8, 2009, we were reminded that the past is part of the future and preserving the past advances civilization. These are very good admonitions to remember about the usefulness of our work. Since MDL seeks to utilize advanced technology to preserve history, a “devil’s advocate” question occured to me:

To advance civilization must we use advanced technology? Is digitization the only way to make history accessible now? Is there still a use for analog media such as paper or microfilm? What are local historical organizations experiencing in terms of consumer demand for local history content?

9 Comments »

The Cokato Museum & Historical Society debuted its web site in the late summer of 1997.  At the time, and to the best of our knowledge, only three other museums in the state had a presence on the web.  A culmination of what seemed like months of planning, this event was met with little fanfare, other than a small article in the museum’s quarterly newsletter.  The local newspaper did not even provide coverage. During our discussions about creating a web site, I made the comment: “Within ten years, the Internet will be the preferred method of information retrieval for a large chunk of the populace.”  Needless to say, I was a little off on that estimate.

Since that humble unveiling, it should come as no surprise that Internet has radically transformed how historical organizations can and should conduct business.  For the Cokato Museum, those changes can be seen in numerous ways. 

One is in handling genealogy requests.  Since we are not the county museum, we were not typically the “first call” people made.  But with a presence on the web, genealogists can find us quite easily.  With our list of available resources, they can decide if we can assist them, and send an e-mail query.  Our research numbers have tripled since 2000, due almost exclusively to the web site.

Another item is providing general historical information about our community.  From a simple “Quick Facts” sheet, to our Lost Cokato series, and articles from our newsletter and the local newspaper, interested persons can learn a great deal about Cokato’s history from the comfort of their own home.  Those who seek further information can easily contact us.

Membership services are another area of benefit.  Early on we utilized email to contact members about upcoming events and other items of interest.  Unfortunately, the proliferation of spam forced us to curtail that avenue.  Now we encourage members to visit our News & Upcoming Events section of the web site, which is updated weekly or as needed.

A list of available publications, membership forms, and other information helps keep the activities of our organization in full view of not just our membership, but all who choose to view our page.

Social networking sites are quickly becoming another avenue by which museums can further advance name recognition.  Pick a network, and you can find organizations which have established a presence there in one form or another.

The negative side, and of course there always is one, can be found in the staff time needed to maintain these digital presences.  With so many organizations struggling to maintain current staffing levels, an honest conversation about time management must take place before embarking on these ventures.  Setting up that initial presence is easy.  Devoting time on a consistent basis for site maintenance can be the difficult part.

The obvious question remains then: what will the future bring for museums as the digital age progresses.  Considering how rapidity by which the technology had advanced, one can only guess at the next directions.  With barely over a decade having passed since museums made their initial forays into the digital universe, many of us in the field are anxious to see those new directions, and to determine if they will be beneficial to the advancement of our mission.

Mike Worcester

Cokato Historical Society

3 Comments »

Recently the Grants Office fielded a call from a county historical society considering a grant for an exhibit that would include a SMART Board. That recalled to mind the wonderful and nationally award-winning exhibit “Eating Out in Clay County” and the Clay County Historical Society. For that exhibit staff included blank notebooks wherein a visitor could respond to the exhibit as prompted by a question. The SMART Board would allow for the same kind of interaction electronically.

On the web, the Minnesota Historical Society recently began using Write on the Record, or WOTR (pronounced “water”), to enable visitors to annotate digital content, much like a reader of this blog can respond to the blog. For example, a researcher can annotate a database record using WOTR to let other researchers know of potential errors in the original, without altering the original record.

It’s encouraging to see how repositories of public trusts now more openly trust the public to add to the overall record. Your thoughts? What are ways that the public can add content by interacting with a local historical organization’s product?

5 Comments »

This is a question for both members of the public and for those at local historical organizations. Bearing in mind that demand for electronic access might always surpass financial ability to provide service, tell us more about electronic delivery of historical services. What services currently satisfy what kinds of demands? What sorts of electronic services are not being offered? How important is it for local history organizations to have pages on Placeography, Facebook, YouTube, Flikr, and the like? What technology skills do local historical society volunteers and paid staff want/need to learn?

These are broad questions and asked only as it is good to occasionally reflect on what we as a community are doing well and what else might be needed. The discussion that follows hopefully will be about what is done now and what is wished for in the future. I think anyone involved with local history knows how stretched volunteers and staff are, so we shouldn’t feel a need to restate that. Instead, I’d like to get a sense of where we as a local history community are, and what kinds of technology might be coming that could be used to good advantage marketing our services and making history more accessible. In order to do that, I will invite the many I know that read this blog but have not commented to share your thoughts. You are observers and users of technology, your thoughts will be important to shaping this discussion.

16 Comments »

The transition from analog photography to digital has produced a windfall for local historical organizations. Many newspapers across Minnesota have donated their file photos to their local historical organization when switching to digital formats.

One result is that an invaluable source of historical data is now, potentially, available to the public in any number of research libraries. Alexander Ramsey, in his first address to the Territorial Legislature in 1849, called newspapers the “daybooks of history.” Editors of local newspapers are often among the most mindful of historical significance in recording events as they happen, and now are looking at the long term preservation of their meticulously recorded photograph files.

However, these donations do not come without a number of issues. First, these files can be extensive. Time spent, most often by volunteers, is a cost as whoever is tasked with processing the collection could have spent time on any number of equally important projects. The temptation can be to just let the photographs sit, but the longer the collection goes unprocessed the longer it remains unaccessible to public. The volume of these files can also cost the organization in terms of storage materials it needs to house them properly. And, for those thinking of digitization, volume will play a role in the cost for that as well.

Second, in file photos there are often variations on images of the same event and only one of those photos actually made it into print. While it might be ideal to save them all, storage space at local history museums is often at a premium. Considerations sometimes have to be made for weeding out less useful iterations that the newspaper originally retained.

Third, hopefully when the newspaper paid for its photos, it also received copyright, which it then transferred to the historical organization. Without copyright, local historical organizations may become custodians for a collection it cannot really use. That too may weigh on the decision to catalog it, but then either an unusable collection or an uncataloged collection will only consume space without further the mission of the repository.

Last, while the contents of the photo may be described in the newspaper, often times only small clues are included on the physical photograph. This too is a barrier, though not insurmountable, to effective cataloging.

There are probably a number of other issues, but these four seem to be among the more common currently experienced by Minnesota’s local historical organizations.

If your organization has large newspaper photo files, what is your experience? How have you addressed these issues?

5 Comments »

What are other museums and historical societies doing for computer technical support? Do they call a third party vendor as needed? Do they contract with a third party vendor for regular support? If so, what services do they contract for and what are they paying? Are software updates and backups done by staff or are these services contracted?

Kurt Kragness

Executive Director

Sherburne History Center

No Comments »

In the MHS blog, Jeff Brand said the following: “In the age of information that we live in today, doesn’t it make more sense to create photograph, art and artifact collections online? Although I realize that a fair amount of income is earned by restricting these collections to paying customers, I also think that it’s unfair that more things aren’t made available to researchers and the general public as well.”

My question is . . . What’s the rush to get our collections online? I fully understand that putting collections online will increase people’s access to them, but the push we are feeling from lovers of technology is overwhelming. Technology is moving so fast that forcing museums to muddle through this is not good for decision-making or the use of resources. Jeff indicates that he understands the challenges this causes for museums. Our challenges include not having enough staff, or enough IT expertise, or enough funding to accomplish this goal in the way people are demanding of us. Magnify this by the fact that within 3 years, whatever we do online will be obsolete and have to be upgraded. How do we go about the digitization of our collections in a smart way? Is there some way to provide museum staff with workshops on digitization? Better yet, are there some modular, open-source, preferably free tools we can gather together that will enable us to easily create photo galleries, online stores or the like on our websites? What sorts of things should we be digitizing? Shouldn’t the care of our physical resources come first?

Mary Warner
Morrison County Historical Society

17 Comments »