Do you scratch your head at the word “archives”? Wonder how it can possibly apply to you as an individual or family historian? Libraries, museums, corporations, universities, etc. have archives that scholars and the public can access when doing research. But have you considered that your stuff, your collection, is an archives too?
There are interesting articles about what is known as Hidden Collections. This term includes the material and related stories people, families maintain but keep ‘hidden’ from others. Not hidden as in ‘secret – don’t tell anybody’, but in the sense that whatever is stashed away in your garage, attic or basement is hidden from others and potential researchers who may find social and cultural interest in them – if they could only see them!
So, I thought this might be a good opportunity to share something I worked on this past fall that allows people to share their collections and bring them out into the light. Let me tell you about a couple ways to organize and share a collection with others online.
Behind the Scenes
A couple months ago I was tasked with organizing, describing and posting a collection online. Allow me to describe how I created my own archives for online access. This is one of many solutions I will share with you so I thought you might be interested in a behind the scenes look.
Collecting vintage postcards has been a passion of mine for years and I keep them in a basket under my glass coffee table. These little gems are so easy to access and share whenever I want (great conversation starters too) and they take up very little space.
By the way, I am a big believer in having collectibles where you can live with and enjoy them, not as artifacts stashed in a box or drawer.
Anyway, I have been studying archiving and digitizing best practices at a local college and wanted to use a portion of this postcard collection to sample a software program used by libraries and museums, called ContentDM.
Using Archives to Create Archives
I used local archives in my area (museums, libraries and historical societies) to research my selected postcards. My goal was to confirm that the images I wanted to share are indeed fairly rare. Meaning they are not currently included in any digital online archival collection and do not appear in print. I did locate a couple postcard images in online auction sites but none included metadata (image descriptions and corresponding data), so I included them in my final selection.
I also used the archives I accessed to get my hands on any metadata (details, dates, descriptions) I needed to fully describe the images. Then I transcribed the postmarks and messages, where applicable.
Next step, careful digitization of the images. Critical to use a high resolution scanner and understand size parameters (pixels, ppi, dpi, etc). I won’t go into those details here but a specific workflow is required. I then generated high and low resolution images and used the low resolution versions (jpg) for easy online access for viewers.
Finally, I created a database of my vintage postcard collection for online access with ContentDM. I accessed this proprietary software through the archiving and digitizing course I took last term. You can view my collection here… It is pretty simple but a solid example of how a personal collection can be shared online.
Click on any thumbnail images to see a full image with all related metadata. Blue text designates ‘keywords’ SEO will use to help guide anyone looking for those items (if the SEO gods are working correctly). Let me know what you think!
Other Examples of Collections
I discovered another resource for archiving and sharing images in an open source platform called Omeka. I really like this platform and plan on creating a parallel collection soon – will post when my next collection is available. The Omeka platform allows much more design freedom and works similarly to WordPress on the back end. Looking forward to digging in on this one very soon. But in the meantime, I did want to share an existing collection created in Omeka from UC Berkeley, Penn Design and others. Please click here. I’ll bet many of you can envision creating something like this for your own family documents, photos, etc. Pretty cool, right?
Another wonderful example of a collection turned into an accessible archives is here. The creator has a real passion for ‘old-school’ department stores and their history. What a wonderful collection. This is a great example of how passion and curiosity can turn a particular topic into a collection and then into an archive for others to access and enjoy.
So there you have it – a quick behind the scenes tale about using archives to create archives. I hope this will get you thinking about how you might rethink your own Hidden Collection – but first you need to find them right?
Be sure to check out my other blogs on that topic.
All for now friends!
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