2021 Partner Event

Tuesday, April 6

1:00 - 2:30 pm Welcome and Keynote  (recording)

Mind the Gaps: Evaluating Digital Collections for New Opportunities (Greta Bahneman, Minnesota Digital Library (MDL), and Jason Roy, Director of the University of Minnesota's Digital Library Services)

Join us for an overview of one of their recently completed projects. Bahnemann will provide an in-depth explanation of her recent collection gap analysis work for MDL. Beginning with a review of the report, they will discuss the initial project charge, the methodology employed, and present the initial set of recommendations for future growth and expansion. The presentation will also include a discussion of the limitations of this kind of work, the efficacy in evaluating the outcomes, and the proactive strategies employed to reduce the subjective nature of collection analysis work. The session will conclude with strategies for getting started on conducting your own collection gap analysis and developing new strategies for collection growth and expansion.

Greta Bahnemann is currently the Metadata Librarian for the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL.) Greta is responsible for implementing current metadata standards and best practices for MDL. In addition, she trains MDL partner organizations in best practices for metadata creation. She also serves as the metadata lead for MDL's standardized Rights Statements work. Greta also develops digital storytelling projects for MDL including online exhibits and the MDL Primary Source Sets program. Greta holds a BA from the University Minnesota, Morris, a MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and a MLIS from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Jason Roy is currently the Director of Digital Library Services at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Jason supports the creation of and access to research and scholarly material in digital form from across the campus community. Jason manages the Libraries’ digitization unit as well as several digital library development projects, including the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, UMedia, and the Libraries’ online exhibits. He also provides technical leadership for Umbra Search African American History. Jason is also the project lead for the Minnesota Digital Library – Digital Public Library of America collaboration. Jason has conducted numerous workshops and speaks frequently on the subject of digital libraries and initiatives. Jason holds a B.A. from the University of Oregon and an M.B.A. from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

2:45 - 3:45 pm Partner Showcase 

• Atlanta Corona Collective: Creative Solutions for Documenting a Pandemic (Leah Lefkowitz and Kate Daly, Atlanta History Center) (recording) Shortly after the March shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Atlanta History Center created the Corona Collective, a collecting initiative that asked Atlantans to submit documentation of how they were experiencing and responding to all aspects of life during the Covid-19 crisis. In this lightning talk we will discuss the logistics, issues, and future of the project. Resources: Corona Collective Submission Form | April 2020 Blog Post | November 2020 Blog Post | StoryCorps Corona Collective Communities Page | StoryCorps/AHC Corona Collective Webinar | Corona Collective visual arts materials Album Page

• Partnering Within Your Community (Perida Mitchell, Thomas County Public Library) (recording) Thomas County Public Library has reached out to their community to make available two distinct collections, Thomas County Funeral Programs and COVID Oral Histories. Perida Mitchell will discuss working with her community to bring the collections to light.

• Providing Clarity: Including Instructions for Patron Guidance for Using Digital Collections (Rachel Senese, Georgia State University) (recording) After migrating our digital collection platform to the hosted version of CONTENTdm, Georgia State University Library is in the process of making our digital collections more user friendly.  This presentation will talk about the first phase of our work: Providing clarity to students and researchers on what digital collections are, how to use the platform, and to preemptively answer frequently asked questions.

• What is Smaller than a Shoestring Budget?: Project Planning with Limited Funding for the City of the Savannah Municipal Archives’ Digitization Studio (Kelly Zacovic, City of Savannah Municipal Archives) (recording) Kelly Zacovic, Archivist with the City of Savannah Municipal Archives, discusses some of the challenges, opportunities, and resources encountered by a small institution while planning an in-house archival digitization studio. 

4:00 - 5:00 pm Discussion Groups by Institutional Type

Wednesday, April 7

1:00 - 2:00 pm Digital Preservation (recording)

Digital Preservation Planning: Where were You, Where are You, and Where do You Want to Be? 

(Kathryn Michaelis, Emory University Libraries)

Digital preservation planning requires periodic assessment and updating of needs, workflows, and environments. We will discuss practical strategies for evolving your institution’s digital preservation program as collections expand, and we will explore some foundational practices that will make scaling up or pivoting a digital preservation program simpler in the long run.

Kathryn Michaelis is the Digital Preservation Program Manager at Emory University Libraries. She has previously worked at Georgia State University and the University of Mississippi. Kathryn earned an M.S. in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an active member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and the Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust).

Making It Work: Practical Digital Preservation for Small-to-Medium Academic Libraries 

(Josh Hogan, Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library) 

This presentation will provide a very brief overview of the Digital Preservation program at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, a medium-sized academic library serving four HBCUs.  This program was developed by a collaborative team assembled from across the library and involving the IT department.  Drawing on the team’s experience and activities, the presentation will discuss challenges faced, solutions discovered, and lessons learned.  The presenter will also discuss practical advice and tips for building an appropriate and sustainable Digital Preservation program for smaller academic libraries.

Josh Hogan is the Assistant Head of the Digital Services Department at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.  In this role, he is heavily involved with the library’s digital preservation and web archiving efforts.  Prior positions include Metadata Librarian, Manuscript Archivist, and Instruction Librarian.

 2:15 - 3:15 pm Conscious Editing and Reparative Description

Working towards justice in our workplace and in our work at Ingram Library's Special Collections (Blynne Olivieri, University of West Georgia) (a copy of this talk can be requested from Blynne)

At the University of West Georgia Ingram Library's Special Collections, we are moving through cycles of awareness and response to racism and other forms of discrimination in ourselves, in the materials we hold, and in researchers. This is not limited to archival description (that is addressed as well), but also in our internal office power structure and communications, in dialogue with researchers, and in how we publicly present and teach about Special Collections. This talk will share some of our learning curves, our actions, and our practices; understanding that we continually have to grow to be more loving, understanding, and justice-seeking individuals, including in our work setting and in what we do.

Blynne Olivieri is an Associate Professor and Head of Special Collections at the University of West Georgia. She is active professionally in the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC), and is a member of the Society of Georgia Archivists (SGA).  Blynne was a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies in 2016. She holds a B.A., M.A., and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Washington (Seattle), where as an undergraduate student she was awarded a David Bonderman Fellowship. She lives in Bowdon, Georgia with her life partner, Marty, and has two nearly-adult children.

Archival Description as Social Justice Work: Anti-Oppressive Descriptive Practices at Rose Library (Sarah Quigley, Rose Library, Emory University) (recording)

As archivists, we know that our description of collections can highlight or obscure stories depending on the choices we make and the results can be either inviting or alienating to our users. We also know that archives and archivists are not exempt from the biases that plague our society and that those biases are obvious not just in what we collect but also in how we present those collections to the public. Without careful attention, it's easy to imply that certain communities are neither present nor welcome in archives. For the past four years, collection services staff at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library have been actively working to revise our descriptive policies and practices to center transparency and inclusiveness, affirm marginalized identities, and combat erasure and exclusion from the historical record. As a Predominantly White Institution that collects archival materials from traditionally marginalized communities, we are obligated as archivists to ensure our description of those materials is reflective of and welcoming to the originating communities. My presentation will give an overview of how we've approached this work at Rose Library, including discussion of goals, workflows, policy/guideline changes, and recommendations.

Sarah Quigley, CA, is Head of Collection Processing at Emory University's Rose Library.  She has a BA in History and a MS in Information Studies, both from the University of Texas at Austin.  She has worked with a variety of collections in her career, including legal and political collections, Southern historical collections, African American collections, and British and Irish Literature collections. She is committed to principled, ethical, transparent, and inclusive arrangement and description of archival collections. Sarah was formerly an instructor in the Clayton State University Master of Archival Studies Program and has taught several arrangement and description workshops and webinars. 

3:30 - 4:30 pm Lightning Talks 

• Digital Collections: Demystifying item photography for the everyday information professional (Chaun Campos,  Georgia State University) (recording)  If you have ever wished you could take professional-looking photographs of items in your archives and special collections, this may be the lightning talk for you!  Slides | Resource Guide

• Integrating ArchivesSpace with Aviary (Jeremy Katz, The Breman Museum) (recording)  Since August 2020, the Breman Museum has catalogued nearly 200 oral history interviews in Aviary, a state-of-the-art online platform for oral history description, which displays media alongside a timestamped, annotated transcript and index. In December 2020, the Breman Museum joined Yale University as the only two archives in the world that have integrated and synced Aviary to ArchivesSpace, the leading collection catalog system in the archives field.

• Local History in Context: Developing a Public Library Digital Exhibit Curators' Cohort (Angela Stanley, Georgia Public Library Service) (recording) Georgia's public libraries have made great strides in digitizing their local history collections, making them accessible to anyone, anywhere, via the DLG. But what of the context and community that's lost in this transition from physical collection to digital artifact? And how are libraries to continue to tell the stories of their communities in the midst of a global pandemic? Angela Stanley, director of the Archival Services and Digital Initiatives department at the Georgia Public Library Service, will discuss recent efforts to train public librarians in digital exhibit creation using the Omeka S platform. The DigEx Project, which is in its pilot year, is working with three public libraries in Macon, Milledgeville, and Albany to create library-led digital exhibits. Angela will discuss successes, challenges, and goals for the project's future. Slides

• The Ups and Downs of Web Archiving a Community Response to COVID-19 (Ashley Shull,  Athens-Clarke County Library Heritage Room) (recording) Athens-Clarke County Library Heritage Staff quickly moved into action mid-March of 2020 to start saving all of the online content created within the Athens-Clarke County community concerning COVID-19; however we did not expect to be quickly overwhelmed ourselves, not just by the amount of material, but the emotional toll of collecting the information. 

• The Gregson and Ellis Architectural Drawings (Helen Thomas, Kennesaw State University) (recording) This selection of nearly 300 architectural drawings highlights public health care facilities and provides insight for researchers on the experience of providing and receiving medical and mental health care in mid-20th century Georgia.

• A Church's Life in Peace and War: The Parish Records of Saint Paul's Church, Augusta, GA, 1820-1937 (Susan Yarborough, St. Paul’s Church) (recording) The web-hosting of the parish registers and Vestry minutes of an historic Episcopal church make the rich, complex history of  a church, a city, and a state available to students, teachers, and the public. 

• The DLG Assists a Small Archive (Brian Hecker, Columbia Theological Seminary) (recording) This talk will cover the positive experience that a part-time archivist had in working with the staff at the Digital Library of Georgia. 

Thursday, April 8

1:00 - 2:00 pm ArchivesSpace 

The Time is Now: An Archives Space Cleanup (Doug Carlson, Odum Library, Valdosta State University) (recording)

After migrating from Archon to ArchivesSpace in January of 2020, the Valdosta State University Special Collections and Archives embarked on a project to clean up the data and bring our collection records into DACS compliance. The Covid-19 crisis and the need for remote work tasks created the opportunity for expansion of the project to include a review of subject headings, collection hierarchy and resource locations.

Doug Carlson is the Archives Technician at Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections. This is the second large ArchivesSpace cleanup in which he has participated. Doug received both his BS in History and MLIS from VSU. He discovered the archives profession as a second career through fortunate happenstance.

From Archivists’ Toolkit to ArchivesSpace: Data Cleanup and Using the API (Corey Schmidt, UGA Libraries) (recording)

In 2020, the University of Georgia (UGA) Hargrett and Russell Libraries conducted a migration from Archivists’ Toolkit to ArchivesSpace, combining two different instances into one and conducting a year’s worth of data cleanup and management. This presentation will talk about UGA Hargrett and Russell Libraries’ migration from Archivists’ Toolkit to ArchivesSpace, specifically the iterative migration process, the various methods of data cleanup before and after the migration, and a brief introduction to the ArchivesSpace API.

Corey Schmidt is the ArchivesSpace Project Manager at the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries. Graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019 with a Masters of Information and Truman State University in 2016 with a Bachelors in History.

2:15 - 3:15 pm Functional Discussion Groups

3:30 - 4:45 pm DEIA Discussion Groups

Discuss with your fellow DLG partners how you think DLG can incorporate DEIA activities into its work. Attendees will discuss in small groups and share back their recommendations. 

4:45 - 5:00 pm Wrap Up