Recently in digitization Category

Kaukauna Public Library and their historic Kaukauna photos were recently in the news. Take a look at "Identifying the Faces in Old Photos" on Fox11. Here's the description of the video news story:

Is a picture always worth a thousand words? What's it worth if you have no idea what the picture is, or who's even in it? Kaukauna Historical Society members say they're still worth holding onto and are trying to attach some names to pictures in their collection before those who may know the names are lost for good.

You can see KAU's photo collection on Picasa. Let us know if you have more names for the faces and places since this aired, okay Maggie?

> contributed by Beth

The Library of Congress recently announced their new Flickr page. Here's a little bit about the project and why they're doing it:

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

They get it! What a wonderful project and a great example of what we could all do with our local collections. Do any of you have ideas for a similar project your library could try?

>> contributed by Beth

At the Directors Meeting on August 23rd, we briefly addressed the topic of digitization and what role OWLS should have in any projects our member libraries have planned. It was the end of a long day with not much time left to discuss the topic, so we'll be following up sometime in the future with a meeting to discuss things more thoroughly.

To help us better plan for the meeting, it would be helpful to know more about the kinds of digitization projects you have in mind and what the obstacles might be in proceeding with your ideas. Please share your thoughts, concerns, and obstacles in the comments below.

>> contributed by Beth