Announcing winners of OHRAB Achievement Award
We all greatly appreciate this important recognition from the Ohio Historic Records Advisory Board, in awarding us one of their two awards in kicking off their new achievement awards programs.
However formally awarded, this is an honor shared by all the community. The nomination stressed the multi-level community collaboration of CSU departments, KSU library practicum students, various partnering public libraries, historical societies and government agencies sharing resources and the partners in the Ohio's Heritage NE, all collaborating to make information on the region's history available to its citizens. We felt the process by which Cleveland Memory (and OHNE) were built is as important as the digital content it provides.
Thank you all for your participation and I hope we can forge even closer relations in the coming months and years, especially as the economy challenges us all to find new sustainable models to achieve our goals.
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OHRAB Achievement Award Announced.
Winners of the 2010 Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board's Achievement Awards are Cleveland State University's Michael Schwartz Library Special Collections Department and Montgomery County Records Center and Archives.
Cleveland State's Special Collections Department has led the Cleveland Memory Project since its beginning in 2002. Institutions as diverse as the Cuyahoga County Engineer's Office, Berea Children's Home, Rocky River Public Library, Hathaway Brown School, and Lakewood Historical Society have contributed materials from their collections to Cleveland Memory. Project partners have made more than 42,000 images and other historic items available online. Practicum and internship opportunities provide real world experience to students while bringing fresh from the classroom perspectives to practitioners. Cleveland Memory is a model of multi-institutional collaboration melding local collection knowledge, shared infrastructure, and professional development opportunities. OHRAB congratulates Cleveland State University and its partners for expanding access to Ohio's historic resources.
Cleveland Memory - http://www.clevelandmemory.org/
In 2006 the Montgomery County Records Center and Archives faced every archivist's nightmare. Active mold, cracked spines on bound volumes, and inadequate storage threatened the existence of the county's historic records. Through a systematic program of compliance with neglected records disposal schedules, environmental improvements and monitoring, and conservation treatment, Montgomery County Records Center and Archives staff have demonstrated that even monumental problems can be mitigated if approached with determination and creativity. The results of their efforts include reduced storage costs, improved access, and the confidence that the early records of Montgomery County will survive. OHRAB recognizes the Montgomery County Records Center and Archives for preserving Ohio's public history records.
Montgomery County Records Center and Archives - http://www.mcohio.org/services/recordarchives/about.html
Nominees for the Achievement Award represented small towns and large cities; public and private institutions; universities, historical societies, and records centers; and a full range of historic records - maps, photographs, marriage, birth, death, and estate records, and more. Common to all their successes were collaboration, determination, creativity, and a passionate commitment to the preservation and expanded use of Ohio's historic records. Clearly, Ohio's historic records community is achieving admirable results.
For more information please contact awards committee chair Jill Tatum at 216-368-4106 or jill.tatem@case.edu.
The Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board is the central body for historical records planning in the Ohio. Board members represent Ohio's public and private archives, records offices, and research institutions. http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/ohrab/
Labels: Cleveland Memory Project, Ohio Historic Records Advisory Board, Ohio's Heritage NE
A Historic Identity for Northeast Ohio
The article
below, about Ohio Historical Society's further reduction in hours, mentions a big collection redevelopment project taking place. The morning
Plain Dealer today has a big article that continues the call for more regionalism. The question that comes to my mind, prompted by a stimulating discussion last night on this subject, is what does it mean to be a resident of Ohio and/or Northeast Ohio? What is our identity, as opposed to someone from Indiana or Florida?
When several NE Ohio libraries formed our
Ohio's Heritage Northeast site several years ago, it was partially to support the greater call for regionalism with some collaborations around the history of Northeast Ohio. But what is "northeast Ohio" geographically and what historical character, what unique identity do we who live here have? Ultimately we decided that the boundaries would be those of the Western Reserve and the next original land survey tract below us, the U.S. Congress Lands N.E., the boundaries of which would be East Liverpool west to a point SW of Mansfield, then north to the west side of Sandusky. This corresponds reasonably well with most definitions of NE Ohio by economic development and environmental sustainability folks and it has the historical virtue of including the Point of Beginning for all the federal surveys under the Land Ordinance of 1785 and has as part of its southern boundary the Greenville Treaty Line.
But that does little to say what it means, historically, to be a resident of NE Ohio. Do we have any defining character or identity? And for that matter, what does it mean, historically, to be an Ohioan? What is the sound-bite, bumper-sticker message we want to send out to the world to tell them something about ourselves? Once upon a time we tried "The Best Location in the Nation," and "Cleveland Is A Plum," and now we're hawking "Cleveland Plus," but these slogans are artificial and don't mean anything that's unique about our area. Plums? Maybe there is nothing unique about our story and living here has no particular thing to say to the world, but I wonder. Any ideas?
Labels: Cleveland history, Cleveland OH, identity, Northeast Ohio, Ohio's Heritage NE, regionalism
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
