Planning Local History Projects on the Web
I always thought that the best way to launch a big undertaking like creating the Cleveland Memory Project was to get all the issues planned in advance, to secure major outside funding, to research and select the best hardware and software, to train the staff in the new technology, to perform some dry runs and then digitize thousands of items before announcing the product. I call this the "Spanish Armada" approach, acknowledging the similar preparations that must have gone into sending that massive fleet off to war.
Lacking the patience to do things the "right" way and eager to see what would work, I just started doing some local history web work in 1996 and gradually recruited other kindred souls on the CSU Library staff to join in. We made mistakes, back-tracked to undo unwise decisions, digitized whatever our whimsy led us to and generally made it up as we went along. I call that the "Dunkirk Model," where you just find something that will float and start paddling like crazy.
Our goal was to reach the New World of digital history as fast as possible. At any moment in the following decade, we expected to hear of a local Spanish Armada being launched, which would blow our effort out of the water, but it never sailed. Instead our fleet of collaborators just keeps growing and we're still operating in a whimsical fashion to a large degree, but we've discovered that this process is a whole lot more fun and is more sustainable, as we're not always worrying about where the next big grant's coming from to keep us afloat.
One outgrowth of this has been the Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium, which will be meeting next on November 5th. The Consortium was formed from a meeting at CWRU in 2004 to help local institutions mount resources on the web about the region's history. Email me for details if you're interested.
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland Memory, digital humanities, Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium, projects
Cuyahoga County Public Library Partners with Cleveland Memory
Cleveland Memory is now sporting some great shots of the Belle-Vernon Dairy, bookmobiles, Mr. William Telling, and other images from the South Euclid Historical Society's collection. Kent State University library school intern Jennifer Pflaum digitized and cataloged the photographs as part of her practicum project, under the supervision of Joe Salamon, of the Cuyahoga County Public Library's South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch.
This new site is the first of what we hope will be many such collaborative projects between the Cleveland Memory Project and the County library system, thanks to Becky Ranallo, their Internet Services Manager.
Labels: Belle-Vernon Dairy, Cleveland history, Cleveland Memory, Cleveland Ohio, Cuyahoga County Public Library, South Euclid, William Telling
Creating Access, Use and Relationships
Cleveland Memory is at the center of a broad, participatory process locally, making information about the history of Northeastern Ohio available on the Web. There are three general levels to this process: Building, Sharing and Using.
Building is the level where materials are identified, captured and described in Cleveland Memory. It is participatory in the sense that a cross-section of the library staff is working on it, that practicum students from Kent’s library school and volunteers are coming here to learn how to help, that some other institutions in the Greater Cleveland History Digital Library Consortium are learning how to add content remotely to Cleveland Memory and that we aim to extend this method of building Cleveland Memory beyond institutions partners to include individuals who have content or subject expertise to contribute.
Sharing is the level where Cleveland Memory’s siblings at other institutions in the region are working together to provide optimal access to their join holdings through the
Ohio’s Heritage Northeast collaboration and other similar projects (perhaps Ohio Memory and/or RailroadHeritage.org). Currently we are only sharing across implementations of CONTENTdm, using Multi-Site Server, but a true Open Archives Initiative implementation would allow us to include partners employing other databases.
Using is the level where we develop the tools to facilitate the access and use of our materials by educators, students, historians, genealogists, the media and the general public. The search and browse functions in CONTENTdm and the various collection home pages we have developed are a beginning, but we should greatly expand this to include more visual, more intuitive and ultimately more interactive interfaces, so that the process of using our information is facilitated and – closing the circle – made the basis for also building our holdings.
While the goal of all this is providing
access, – after all, the CSU Library’s mission is “To Connect People and Information” – the key to accomplishing this is the creation of
relationships among the residents of the regional community who have a stake in Cleveland Memory, or Ohio’s Heritage Northeast. We don’t only use collaborations to build Cleveland Memory, but also use Cleveland Memory as an excuse to build collaborative relationships. It is the relationships that are ultimately most important to Cleveland State, our partners and the entire NEO region.
At each level there are appropriate technological means to facilitate relationships and participation with the wider community. CONTENTdm’s remote acquisition program and Multi-Site Server are the means for fostering relationships at the Building and Sharing levels, but we very much need to focus on developing similar tools for the Using level. Fortunately they are right at hand in the explosion of new Web2.0 tools, which incorporate ways to empower the user access and use of the materials and turn users into builders. While continuing our current means of growing Cleveland Memory and Ohio’s Heritage Northeast, we must immediately evaluate and incorporate select Web2.0 features like commenting, rating and tagging into our operations. This will facilitate access, use and relationship-building and will insure the success of what we are attempting to accomplish.
Labels: Access, Cleveland history, Cleveland Memory, Northeast Ohio, Ohio's Heritage NE, Relationships
