digital collections – Digital Collections

May 14, 2019May 20, 2019

Justice For All: A Digital Exhibit for South Carolina Civil Rights

By Mēgan Oliver

In December of 2018, Digital Collections Librarian, Mēgan Oliver, and Library Web Developer (Library Technology Services (LTS)), Sarah Funk, met with the exhibition team from the Center for Civil Rights History and Research. The civil rights team was planning an exhibition entitled “Justice for All: South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement“. The team members, Dr. Bobby Donaldson, Jill Found, Patrice Green, Jennifer Melton, Celeste Minor, and Jonathon Johnson, expressed their needs for a digital exhibit, and we in Digi and LTS laid out what digital exhibition options are available (we’re building digital exhibits in WordPress currently). The civil rights team chose their layout, essentially the digital look and feel of the exhibit, and expressed their goals. As the Director of the Center, Dr. Donaldson communicated what was most important, in terms of the collection’s context and emphasized how he wanted to highlight visually compelling digital archives to support the physical exhibit of Justice for All: South Carolina and the American Civil Rights Movement. With these parameters, Digi and LTS began working to support this traditional exhibit structure with an online component.

The exhibit opened in the Ernest F. Hollings Library in February of 2019, complete with civil rights speakers, tours of the collections, special events, and a variety of press releases. This summer, the exhibit will see it’s final few months. Don’t miss the incredible collections on display! Justice for All is open until August 31. If you can’t make it to Columbia, SC to see it in person, not to worry: there’s a permanent digital exhibit with the same title, Justice for All.

April 9, 2019April 9, 2019

A Team Effort

By John Quirk

The creation of a digital collection always demands some amount of collaboration. Content matter experts, scanning technicians, metadata librarians, web developers…all working together to bring a project to fruition. The size of the team varies from collection to collection but it is always a collaborative effort.

UofSC’s Digital Collections has been involved in a project lately that not only exemplifies this spirit of collaboration but pushes it to unusual lengths. This project is the Abstract of Voter Registrations Reported to the Military Government, 1868.

This 31-volume abstract of voter registrations was originally created by order of the commander of the Second Military District who had ultimate responsibility for the registration of voters and the conduct of elections. The volumes record the name and race of each registered voter arranged by county and registration precinct. It is a fascinating and historically valuable snapshot of elections in South Carolina in the years just after the Civil War. The process of bringing these documents into the digital world has demanded the efforts of an unusual number of dedicated souls.

These historic volumes were originally microfilmed in 1987 by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. The South Carolina State Library recognized their significance and the potential value of having them digitized and made available on the web. The University of South Carolina’s Digital Collections department scanned the microfilm, creating the digital files using its Mekel Microfilm scanner. The South Carolina State Library then created the metadata describing each volume. UofSC’s Digital Collections used that metadata to upload the digitized Abstract of Voter Registrations to its CONTENTdm database make them freely available online. The road often ends there…but in this case the road has a few more twists and turns…

Having such historic documents digitized and online certainly extends their discoverability and accessibility well beyond volumes on an archive shelf or in a microfilm drawer. However, if a text can be made fully searchable the usefulness and discoverability is hugely improved. When scanning text that is printed or typewritten it is possible to create a searchable text file using an optical character recognition program (OCR) that can decipher text in a still image. However, automated OCR is not an option when the text is handwritten as it is in this Abstract of Voter Registrations. This is where the collaborative aspect of this project grows exponentially.

Richland County Library’s Walker Local and Family History Center has been marshalling a phalanx of intrepid volunteers and librarians to manually transcribe each page of the entire 31 volumes. These transcribers are peppered across the state and as they complete their efforts the transcriptions are sent to the Walker Local and Family History Center to be collated. Those transcriptions are then sent from Richland Library to UofSC where they are integrated into the digitized items online. In the end, this process will make the entire Abstract of Voter Registrations fully searchable for names and locations thus improving its reach and usability.

One example of the broad reach these files can have is the recent featuring of an item from this very collection on a segment of Henry Louis Gate, Jr.’s PBS program Finding Your Roots. Click here to see a clip: https://www.pbs.org/video/michael-k-williams-immediate-voter-registration-p9xcw3/ After so much coordination and concerted effort, it is quite rewarding to see the fruits of those labors pay off in such a way.

All of this cross-institutional collaboration is aided by established relationships developed over time as partner members of the South Carolina Digital Library. The SCDL is a statewide search portal that aggregates digital collections from over 60 institutions bringing together over 300,000 digital items. The UofSC Digital Collections department is the scanning hub helping to coordinate collections being created in the Midlands and hosts collections for smaller institutions that do not have the means to do that.

March 19, 2019March 25, 2019

John H. McCray Digital Collection

Portrait of John H. McCray, year unknown

By Chauna Carr

As part of the Justice For All exhibit at Hollings Library, the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at UofSC created a timeline of African Americans in South Carolina, advocating for the full rights promised to them by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. John H. McCray was but one of many who played an influential role in the fight for justice for African Americans in South Carolina and across the nation. McCray was the founder, editor, and publisher of the Lighthouse and Informer weekly newspaper, one of the top black newspapers of its day. He used the newspaper to launch his program for black political participation, and to advocate for racial equity and social justice.

McCray’s entire collection is digitized and available through the South Caroliniana Library. However, upon putting the exhibit materials together for Justice For All, it was discovered that the McCray collection needed some updating. As a preliminary task to the collection-wide metadata assessment underway in the Digital Collections department, Digital Collections Librarian Mēgan Oliver tasked me with cleaning up the McCray metadata. I started the project in January and am making steady progress. Keep an eye out for those improvements and more updates in the future. If you live in the area and are interested in this topic, stop by the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library to see the Justice For All exhibit up until August 2. If you cannot stop by in person, visit our digital exhibit: https://digital.library.sc.edu/exhibits/civilrights/

March 5, 2019March 5, 2019

Employee feature: Meet Allison!

By Allison Rogers

Allison working with illustrations on the Zeutschel OS 14000 A0 planetary scanner

Hello, I’m Allison, one of the new digitization specialists in the Digital Collections family. When I’m not studying for exams and assignments in my undergraduate degree in Computer Science, I’m digitizing letters and documents from the American Revolution or scanning film from newspapers in the 1950s. While meticulously charting metadata can sometimes be monotonous, the work is intriguing. In digitizing the material we have, I get to experience a more casual glimpse into American history, as I review letters about plantations, accounts of purchased goods, and even notes from meetings of the Continental Congress. Currently, I’ve been scanning and creating metadata for newspapers that my grandparents might have read in the morning before heading to work.

What I do here is not only fascinating; it’s distinctly different from what I do in my classes at the university. Computational science can be extremely engaging and exciting, but the work I do now is dry and technical, with little room for creativity and perspective. Additionally, many of the career paths for these kinds of majors are concerned with how to create more profit for already giant companies. Before working here, there seemed to be little application for involving art, literature, or history.

Working at Digital Collections has truly been a magical experience for me. In my classes at the university, programming is logic and linear algebra and string operations on arbitrary homework assignments. Here, in the basement of the library, among gorgeous aged rare books, I see incredibly intelligent and skilled individuals writing and running scripts, coding databases, interpreting and analyzing metadata, and preserving rare historic material. It is astounding and encouraging to be a part of a department that marries programming with history.

I am also delighted to see so many women around me engaged in programming, troubleshooting, and web development. It’s wonderful working with such talented and skilled women, especially coming from a male dominated field. In my short time in this office, I have come realize that a background in computing and programing can offer a sort of modernization to the humanities, and that we can work together to keep art and history and cultural relevant in an increasingly digital age. Although for now, I do simple data input, I’m excited to learn more about web development and big data analysis and apply it here or in adjacent areas as the field of digital humanities expands.

February 18, 2019February 18, 2019

2019 Digital Collections Goals

By Mēgan Oliver

New year, new goals. We’re planning several internal projects of note, with a few grants and lots of ongoing collections work thrown into the mix. Primarily, we’re starting a collection-wide metadata assessment for all 261 of our current collections. This assessment will take approximately 4 months with one full-time librarian and two part-time professional staff dividing the work. Once the assessment is complete, we will prioritize ‘worst first’ and begin the oversized task of remedying metadata mistakes, unicode/machine readable transliteration problems, ADA accessibility issues, and Dublin Core mapping mishaps. Human error runs through the work that is cataloging and metadata entries, and we’re not immune! This planned overhaul will most likely take upward of two years with current staffing levels.

Assistant Laura Stillwagon scanning, using our 8ft tall overhead Zeutschel OS 14000 A1.

Also on the docket: library-wide digital preservation. Director of Digital Research Services, Kate Boyd, will be leading this effort. Our first meeting this spring should bring together invested parties from South Carolina Political Collections, The Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the UofSC Music Library, Moving Image Research Collections, Department of Oral Histories, Digital Research Services, and South Caroliniana Library.

Finally, we’re bringing the tenets of UX and UI to our work here in the department. Looking at digital exhibitions and digital humanities tools, we’re assessing what works best with our digital collections needs, staff skill sets, departmental budget, and time. We hope to offer a small suite of new DH options to our internal campus users, so aesthetically pleasing and fully functional web interfaces for our external users are created, with an eye towards what best suits the materials we’re presenting. Story Maps, Timeline, Scalar, and OxGarage are all under investigation for their potential uses with digital collections and exhibitions. At the end of spring, we hope to have some answers and a plan!

We’re invested in making our departmental process is clear and we enjoy using our blog to make everything we do as transparent and accessible as possible, for our readers, users, and colleagues outside of UofSC. Let us know if there’s something you’d like to hear about in the comments. Til next time!

January 27, 2019January 10, 2019

More on the Qidenus: the Acquisition & Set-Up, Part II

By Laura Stillwagon

The Arrival

As addressed in the previous blog post, the Qidenus SMART Book Scan 4.0 was purchased to scan and digitize bound items. In our department, nested inside the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library, we have found the complexity of the Qi’s construction to be a reflection of its precise and accurate functionality. In this machine, both design and output are streamlined. Almost everyone who meets the Qidenus before they begin using it for the first time is intimidated, and I was no exception. At the time, not only did I have little knowledge in the digitization process, but what little functioning knowledge and experience in photography and operating DSLRs I had gave me no security; I had no knowledge on tethered technology, nor enough on all the settings that contributed to the exposure of images; and I certainly did have not enough confidence in myself to operate two DSLRs at once. The sleek machine doesn’t smell fear, but nothing downplays the machine’s sophistication. Once I was given instruction on the basic operation of the Qi, I grew more comfortable after each use. And upon given permission to explore the features and other functions of the machine, the Qi and I developed a good working relationship.

Not Yet Suitable for Routine Use at the Time

Those using the Qi immediately after arrival at Digital Collections were not entirely pleased with the images it produced. Following its delivery and set-up, little time was available to learn and integrate the Qidenus as a tool for the Digital Collections projects of and those of the other departments like the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections located next door. There was no company-issued manual available. Once purchased, we received paper manuals only for the Canon cameras used in the Qi, but they were all in German, French, Italian, and Dutch and no one in our offices or the neighboring offices speak these languages to our knowledge.

Upon investigation, I found that minor exposure adjustments had to be made to the captured images in Photoshop (post-process) in order to get rid of a shadow that seemed to shroud the pages. This didn’t make any sense to us who used the Qi because the item seemed to be clearly featured under the LED lights in the ceiling of the machine. Fortunately, I was tasked with investigating the Qi and diagnosing what was causing the images to be under-exposed. Thankfully, and as expected, I found nothing to be wrong with the machine and the only problem that has consistently stifled the Qi’s performance is the incurable virus, User Error. This is not to say that we as users continually and with intent used the machine without learning how to use it, but that we simply did not have complete instruction at the start.

In our defense, the minimal instruction on operating the Qi we were given, and what we passed on by word of mouth to each other and to new users, did not begin to cover the knowledge that was required to operate DSLRs. We lacked knowledge of photography: not knowing what aspects of light contributed to exposure and image capture and the features of digital-SLRs (and other cameras, for that matter) that interpret and manipulate light to produce images. Once I confirmed that there was nothing ailing the Qi, one of the major gaps in knowledge that I sought to fill with research was camera operation and other relevant aspects of photography. (At one point when it was still a possibility that the machine had a flaw, we had brainstormed fixes and jokingly—but also seriously—considered using a curtain to further isolate the machine and DSLRs from other light in the environment.)

I gathered information on the settings common to all cameras like shutter speed, aperture, white balance (WB), and ISO, and then I searched for features specific to the Qi’s Canon EOS 5DS cameras. I performed many tests to determine the proper exposure settings to serve as a keynote for users and the diverse bound items they bring to the Qi. To attain these settings, I tested a variety of items with pages that ranged from having lots of detail, or a glossy finish, to those that appear weathered and faded. Since then I have learned what can be accomplished with the Qi, creating in-depth instructions (in English!) specific to the Digital Collections department. With my new understanding of light, photography, DSLRs, Canon technologies and software, I endeavor to also assist others as they learn to use the Qi for the first time.

In the next blog, I’ll outline the complexity and daily use of the Qi. Stay tuned!

January 9, 2019January 9, 2019

Abby Munro: Educator for destitute children in South Carolina, 1870-1890s

By Sarah Moore

Abby Munro was a teacher from Rhode Island who came to Mount Pleasant, South Carolina to help Cornelia Hancock in teaching Black freed men and women at the Laing School. At the Laing School, students received an education and were given an opportunity to learn a trade. (Laing Middle School of Science and Technology; Fludd; Town of Mount Pleasant Historical Commission). In the 1870s, Munro took over for duties from Hancock and became the principal of the school. She expanded on the original work of Hancock, when in 1882 she opened a Children’s Home for Destitute Children, one of the first orphanages for African Americans in South Carolina (Fludd; Mount Pleasant Historical Commission). Though older than the Jenkins’ Orphanage, the Destitute Children’s Home was smaller and served the local population of Mount Pleasant. (Fordham, 2009).

This collection consists of a range of items related to Abby Munro’s work at the Home of Destitute Children and the Laing School in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, like legal documents signed by parents giving custody of children to Abby Munro. Additionally, documents in the collection frequently outline that a child will be cared for while receiving an education. A second medium found in this collection is photographs, most of which are of the Laing School. These photographs allow for a glimpse into education at the Laing Normal and Industrial School. One photograph shows students learning to cobble shoes. Another photograph shows young girls learning to sew.

Arthur Macbeth, an African American photographer based in Charleston, South Carolina, took many of these photographs of the Laing School. After studying with German, French, and American photographers, Macbeth opened his own studio in Charleston in 1886 (Bowser, 1999). A few of Macbeth photographs were used some of the in Laing School publications that reported on progress of the school and home. Both the Laing school and Children’s Home relied heavily on donations and these publications used to show how the donations were being used, plus how the donations were making a difference.

Check our our digital collection, Abby D. Munro papers, 1837-1913. The physical collection is held at South Caroliniana Library.

Citations

Bowser, P. “Pioneers of Black Documentary Film.” (1999). Struggles for Representation: African American Documentation Film and Video. (page 4)
Fludd D. “Laing School History” Accessed October 17, 2018.
Fordham, D. L. Voices of Black South Carolina: Legend and Legacy.(2009).
Laing Middle School of Science and Technology: For a New Generation of Learners. “School History.” Accessed October 16, 2018.
Town of Mount Pleasant Historical Commission. “Mount Pleasant Home for Destitute Children.” Mount Pleasant Historical. Accessed October 15 2018.

December 21, 2018

Digitally Capturing Books with the Qidenus SMART 4.0

By Laura Stillwagon

For those who frequently use smart technology, search engines, and various applications, we have taken on the role of researchers or information seekers, no matter how marginally. Information has become quite precious to us, and we can obtain what we need (or at least try to) much quicker now than in decades past. The value of historical information and records has not changed but the urgency to preserve it for the future may. With the capabilities and access of information technologies we can now preserve old, original pieces of information, like artifacts, books, photographs, and film. And with innovations and improvements in digitization, the standards of acceptable quality have changed where we as users now desire more features and images that are almost life-like. Thankfully, there are technologies available to preserve deteriorating historical items, creating digital representations that mimic observing these items in reality. One such piece of technology is the Qidenus.

Introducing the Qidenus SMART Book Scan 4.0

The Qidenus, pronounced kuh-day-nuh-s or kah-day-nuh-s, or simply the Qi (‘key’), introduces a new standard for item digitization with the integration of multiple technologies that work in unison with the minimal effort required of the operator. Hailing from Austria, our Qidenus SMART Book Scan 4.0 utilizes two Canon DSLRs (digital cameras) pointed at an angled scan bed to capture books (often rare ones), journals, scrapbooks, and other bound items. The machine and related peripheral technologies and software offered by the Qidenus Technologies (Qidenus Group, Gmbh) are highly regarded in the fields of archiving and preservation. Beautiful and prestigious national libraries in Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan boast of being Qidenus Technologies users for all their regular and specialized digital needs. The Digital Collections department here at the University of South Carolina in the Thomas Cooper Library happily purchased the Qidenus in February 2018, and after calibrating the machine to meet the needs and skills of the staff in Digital Collections and in other Special Collections departments, the Qi SMART 4.0 has greatly enhanced the work done, making it almost feel like one is examining pages of bound items in person.

Bringing together a group of highly skilled specialists, this genius concept and product was invented by Sophie Qidenus. The Qi joins a handsome line of high-performing digitization technologies and other digitization services created by the same company and specialists. From ‘basic’ office scanners to manual, semi-automatic, and fully automatic machine operation, Qidenus Technologies does not disappoint and they have a reason celebrate their successes in patents and market-leading output. Qidenus Technologies has quite a few notable global patents, one of the more exciting being the fully automated page-turning mechanism, a feature of their Qidenus ROBOTIC Book Scan 4.0. It seems fitting that Qidenus Technologies originated within a University Campus, specifically the Vienna University of Economics and Business, one of the many areas that can benefit from these products.

The Qi to Our Digital Collections

Through the grant-writing efforts of the head of our department, Kate Boyd, UofSC Digital Collections obtained the funds to purchase the machine. After using it for about a year, it’s hard to imagine any other method of digitizing bound items. With DSLRs, the Qi produces image files of bound items (digital surrogates) that appear as clear as if they were being viewed in reality, proving to be a wonderful addition to the tools and methods to the Department. In this way, bound items can not only be read and examined beyond their physical life span, but lots of people can access them at once. Even though it caters to visual observation, the Qi’s performance in digitization adds another way for users to view and observe items as they stand at the point of digitization, going beyond the subject or meaning created by the content of items themselves.

The central feature of the Qi in our possession, and most of the Qidenus products, really, is the DSLRs. The DSLRs and their subsequent lenses are set to yield superb, life-like images. Although the Qi is not the first to employ DSLRs to scan and capture bound items, it is the first to integrate multiple technologies and software into one device, into one mechanized system. Handmade devices with cameras often require two operators, and control over image quality and exposure is minimal. All connected, the technologies and software of the Qi manages image quality (including exposure) and file storage at once, prioritizing output. It is with this technology and the appropriate camera/image capture settings that the resulting images are of high detail and resolution to allow for intense magnification and examination.

Despite all issues with digitization as a practice, some of which have stood the test of time and innovation, achieving digital renderings or surrogates that are as close to visually observing the physical item in person is an accomplishment and the ultimate goal. One of the considerations with digital/online media is that the quality of the digital surrogate is not always consistent, nor are users’ devices consistent in providing the intended, published quality. For example, retina displays, LCD screens, older versions of screens, and touch screens, all present media and actions online differently; this includes image quality! The Qi allows for a wide array of RAW image file types to be used in order to maintain image files that are vivid and rich with information, and also the reproduction of other file types to serve a variety of purposes and technologies. Moreover, the ability to manipulate the camera capture settings of the Qi’s digital cameras allows for image files to be further tailored to devices and viewing purposes.

Why Digitization with the Qi

Digitization is one of the many methods used to maintain cultural media as time passes, and it fits well into the digital activities of society. Creating, posting, and sending media and correspondence; purchasing movie tickets and ordering food for delivery; and locating the nearest parking garage or Uber Driver–all are activities we can do easily on our computers and smart phones. And while reading WWI documents may not be done with the same mindset as the latter activities, it is still doable. Students and professors here at the UofSC as well as users of the University Libraries’ services, find it helpful to view original documents as a means to create assignments and learning opportunities, and for research and instruction. Users outside the University and its Libraries also find benefits in digitally stored photographs, manuscripts, books, and other record keeping material when it comes to researching and constructing family histories and lineages.

Digital and web services of archives, museums, libraries, and related institutions are not exempt from user standards, and they have the opportunities to go beyond their users’ expectations. Qidenus technology utilizes DSLRs and other digital design technologies to ensure digitized items are seen with high-quality. With several methods of controlling the quality of images and their storage, the Qi makes digitization of bound items much more precise. For more discussion on the Qi, on the quality of its mechanics and a look into one of the projects accomplished with the Qi, check out our forthcoming blog posts in this series on the Qidenus in 2019!

November 30, 2018November 30, 2018

Digitizing a sample of the John Caldwell Calhoun Papers

By Sarah Moore

I landed in digital collections by pure serendipity. I entered the Public History program with a focus on historic preservation at the University of South Carolina. Receiving no funding from my department, I applied for a position in Digital Collections helping to digitize The Gamecock from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Discovering my love for Library Science too late, I continue to work in Digital Collections hoping to build upon my interest in how digital collections can be used for historical preservation. Over the last few months, I have worked on five different projects including digitizing a portion of the John Caldwell Calhoun papers.

A silked letter from J. C. Calhoun to his mother Floride Colhoun. Note the surname spelled differently.

In planning for the Teacher Workshops for Social Studies teachers, library organizers selected the John Caldwell Calhoun papers for use in the workshop. A controversial figure of history today, Calhoun was an active proponent of slavery and states’ rights during his political career. A native of South Carolina, Calhoun served in the United States House of Representatives, became the Secretary of War and became the Vice President of United States. Thus, it was easy to see why items from this collection were ideal for a workshop focused on helping social studies teachers utilize digital collections in their classroom.

This collection consists mainly of business and personal correspondence of John C. Calhoun from the South Caroliniana Library, little of which was digitized. For the workshop, a few letters were selected to be digitized. In selecting this letters, however, it was discovered that these letters were silked, in attempt to preserve the letters. Silking was a conservation technique used in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth centuries. In basic terms, this process consisted of adhering a thin piece of transparent silk to a document. The reasoning behind this process was to slow down the deterioration process of the paper (Barrow, 1942; McCarthy, 2016).

In digitizing the Calhoun papers for the Teacher’s Workshop, my initial thoughts were on time management for the project, in order to ensure that everything was accessible and usable for the workshop. Thus, my focus was on the project flow of this endeavor, scanning all the items and ensuring clear images, that any questions about the metadata edited, and everything loaded on the library depository, well before the deadline. Although it was interesting to see and work with letters that went through this early method of preservation, the fact that items in this collection were silked was not a part of my initial focus.

I started by scanning letters from the Calhoun collection on the Zeutschel, a large flat base scanner in the Digital Collections office. In looking at the first images of the scanned letters, I noted problems in seeing the handwriting in the images. Since the letters were going to be used in a workshop, and the fact that handwriting from the nineteenth century materials are in themselves hard to read, the clearest images were needed. Thus, I sought advice on getting more clear images. The library consulted a conservator to see what could be done about the silked documents while in the office, basic research was conducted into experiences from other libraries and archives in using silked materials.

One unexpected outcome of silked archival items it that the items become harder to read over time. The aluminum in the paste affected the acidity of the paper, resulting in ink dissolving and discoloration of the paper overall. It is possible that this what led to the discoloration in the documents. Further research also revealed that this process often used arsenic. While there was no evidence that these materials contained arsenic, I took precautions and wore gloves when handling the Calhoun papers (Information Resource Management Association, 2019; McCarthy, 2016).

While the problem with clarity of some of the images remained, I continued to scan the letters and began to create metadata in hopes some of the images could still be used in the Teachers Workshop. The last step was to add the images and metadata in to the library’s digital depository known as CONTENTdm, so the images would be accessible online through the Library’s website. Some of the more legible images were used in the teacher’s workshop. The fully digitized John Caldwell Calhoun collection can be found here: https://digital.library.sc.edu/collections/john-c-calhoun-papers/

Citations:

Barrow, W. J. Restoration Methods. (1942) The American Archivist. Page 152 Retrieved from http://www.americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.6.3.497248722g4584rr?code=SAME-site.

Information Resource Management Association USA. (2019). Digital Curation: Breakthrough in Research and Practice. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=lcxjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=arsenic+in+silking+archival+materials&source=bl&ots=ymV2dnhioj&sig=nzhC0NeX3EpyvjEGAzeaKA2nyAU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwv5jFv-rdAhWC21MKHcwZDfAQ6AEwCXoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=arsenic%20in%20silking%20archival%20materials&f=false.

McCarthy, C. of YUL Conservation and Exhibition Services, Preservation Department, Yale University. (2016 October 11). “Arsenic and Old Paste: Using XRF to Assess Silked Documents” [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://yulconservationandexhibitservices.wordpress.com/2016/10/.

November 8, 2018November 14, 2018

[Part III: William D. Workman, Jr. Photographs] Wrapping up!

By Chauna Carr

One of the reasons I enjoyed working on this project was the chance to work with Mēgan Oliver and the equipment and software used in Digital Collections. Mēgan knew how skeptical I was to start mid-project, but she was great at encouraging me to tackle any issues I came up against head on. She is a big part of the very open and warm atmosphere fostered within Digital Collections. She has a wealth of knowledge on all things digital, as well as on professional development and job hunting. She has become a great resource and acquaintance to have as I make my way into the professional industry.

Probably one of the best things about working in Digital Collections is Mēgan and Kate’s trust in their student’s abilities*. They not only give you confidence but encouragement that you have what it takes to complete your project (or else they would not have hired you in the first place). More often than not with projects like this, encouragement is hard to come by. It is nice to know that what you are doing is right and you are not just guessing and hoping it is good enough. Their communication is top notch.

Coming into the grant mid-project and not being fully knowledgeable of the entirety of the subject matter made completing the written tasks quite challenging to say the least. Those assignments (specifically those dealing with creating social media content) were probably the hardest for me to complete. I tended to overthink what kind of content would engage our digital audience and remain relevant to our project. Now that I have made it through this project I have more confidence in my ability to tackle problems that are unfamiliar. That is probably one of the best feelings to come away with, the confidence in my new found skills. It makes me that much more confident that I can find a position and work my way up, taking on more responsibility and tackling larger assignments as a go. It may seem like a small thing, but that confidence is everything. This project has been the perfect opportunity to exercise all of the skills I have learned the past two years, and a great experience to add to my resume overall.

Chauna is heading into her final semester for the Masters in Library and Information Science here at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She is preparing her final portfolio of all her work done for the past two years, editing her resume, and on the hunt for jobs in the archival world. Her hope is to find an archival or library fellowship overseas to give her access to potential employment in England; a goal inspired by her recent month-long study abroad program in London. Her current interests rest in fashion archives, Oceanic, African and African-American art and art history. Her pursuits are quite varied and her experience is diverse. [We hope she finds a place to match her incredible skill set.]

*We did not pay Chauna to say nice things about her supervisors. She actually likes us!

Tag: digital collections