MS-Word version of 
Wisconsin Heritage Online Grant Proposal
March 2008
Prepared by Cathy Markwiese and Debbie Cardinal
Objective:
The objective of our grant application is to introduce and train
Proposal:
Free training, support and assistance with project management will get the small public libraries and historical societies started with digitization projects. Once started on a project, they will seek and secure local funding to establish a digitization program. We anticipate that the technology needs for digital projects and some of the staffing problems could be addressed by partnerships with local public or academic libraries, where technology skills are higher. There is often overlap in local history collections which make collaboration beneficial to both parties.
Timeframe: Two years
Cost: $109,500 year one; $117,430 year two
Stage One-Formation
For the past two years, Wisconsin Heritage Online has been a project of Wisconsin Library Services, jointly funded with contributed partner services from Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS), Wisconsin Historical Society,
In this short amount of time, the working groups and governing board of the Wisconsin Heritage Online initiative have accomplished several goals of our statewide digital initiative. We have:
1. Prepared and adopted a long range plan
2. Established working groups which developed membership information and standards-based digitization planning information; and developed and posted standards-based guidelines for metadata and imaging.
3. Provided a digital collection web hosting service through the Wisconsin Historical Society
4. Provided a metadata harvesting service through the
5. Established a central website for harvested
6. Established an open wiki for collaborative development and access to Wisconsin Heritage Online guidelines, software tools, and planning information, http://wiheritage.pbwiki.com.
7. Compiled a joint database of
8. Distributed a survey to historical societies and museums to collect information about their interest in and capabilities for digital projects
Key activities by the Wisconsin Heritage Online Project Coordinator during 2006-2007 have been:
1. Distribute information and a newsletter to historical societies, public libraries and museums to educate them about Wisconsin Heritage Online membership services
2. Arrange for hosting and consulting services for several projects
3. Monitor harvesting of existing digital collections into the Wisconsin Heritage Online site, supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison
4. Designed with the Museum Working Group an extensive survey about museum and historical society collection processes.
We feel we have demonstrated the value of the collaborative, digital initiative concept for
Stage Two – Developing a Robust Collection through Promotion and Support
In Stage Two, we will expand our program to reach a more defined number of institutions (from data in the historical society/museum survey results), with the goal of providing a rich collection of Wisconsin history and culture in a single digital portal that will be accessible to everyone in the state, from a fourth grader doing a report on the Peshtigo fire to a genealogist seeking a missing branch in his family tree.
Target Audience:
Small historical societies and museums that have been identified as “digitization ready” through the survey.
Strategy: Outreach Counselors and Consultants
Outreach Counselors Expenditures:
Grant money for Outreach Counselors would pay
1. Travel expenses
2. Long distance phone calls
3. Initial development of consistent documentation that all Outreach personnel would use.
4. Program promotion and marketing resources for community liaisons.
Role of Outreach Counselors:
Members of the Wisconsin Heritage Online Outreach working group, as Outreach Counselors would:
1. Speak knowledgably and enthusiastically about Wisconsin Heritage Online at conferences, as well as to specific local cultural heritage institutions identified through the survey. Components of their role:
2. Explain Wisconsin Heritage Online digitization resources and training opportunities using information compiled at http://wiheritage.pbwiki.com
3. Advise on material review and selection
4. Help identify funding sources and cost
5. Explain to each site the basic steps in planning and implementing a digital project
6. Assist the site with equipment recommendations and purchase
7. Conduct periodic follow-up visits with the sites to assess progress and refer site back to Consultant
8. Encourage collaboration with LSTA funded local public libraries projects.
9. Refer project-ready sites to the Project Manager
Framework:
1. We will be taking advantage of the collaborative nature of the Wisconsin Heritage Online initiative by using local people to support local institutions as much as possible.
2. Since this a volunteer activity, we would expect the Outreach Counselor to make conference presentations addressing the most people in the shortest period of time.
3. Each Outreach Counselor’s visit would cover material that would address the current needs of the group. The focus of this Counselor group would be on guidance rather than on teaching.
4. Questions about the digital project from the sites, or complicated workflow arrangements would be referred to the Consultants and the Project Manager.
Consultant Expenditures:
Grant money for Consultants would pay
1. Salaries for two half-time positions
2. Travel expenses
Role of Consultants:
Consultants would:
1. Work directly with specifically chosen historical societies or museums, after ‘digitization readiness’ is verified by the Outreach Counselors and Project Manager
2. Assess the institution’s digitization plan and timeline
3. Evaluate equipment choices, based on the material they plan to digitize.
4. Conduct training on digitizing basics, guided by the Wisconsin Heritage Online Digital Imaging
5. Prepare an implementation planning packet for the Outreach Consultants to use in their visits to prospects.
6. Develop with the Project Manager, training courses and materials for the project sites, some of which would be delivered via web technologies with guidelines to include:
· Image file size and types
· File naming and storage conventions
· Image editing techniques (Photoshop only)
· Setting up a workflow
· Preservation basics
· Handling of original materials
· Optical Character Recognition (OCR) factors
7. Training for either CONTENTdm Acquisition Station or PastPerfect with a focus on customizing a metadata template that can be re-used for later projects (guided by the Wisconsin Heritage Online Metadata Standards).
8. Training for project and collection setup that will allow the digital collection to grow after the initial project is completed.
9. Distribute tutorial material at point of need.
10. Set up milestones so the institution knows they are in a mentoring relationship with the Consultants, the Outreach Counselor and the Project Manager.
11. Communicate with the Outreach Counselor, who will check at milestone points to assess project progress and give further guidance. If necessary, on referral, the Project Manager or Consultant will follow-up with the Project Site.
12. Make a site visit to the institution to discuss their plan, and train them on their digitizing equipment after the Project Manager (on advice of Outreach Counselors) has verified site readiness.
Framework:
1. One Consultant will have a CONTENTdm/library focus; one Consultant will have a PastPerfect/historical society/museum focus
2. Consultants will have a higher knowledge and skill level than the Outreach Counselors and will spend more time with the project sites.
3. Whenever possible, training will be held for multiple institutions and people.
4. Digital equipment training would be done on-site at each institution;
5. CONTENTdm and PastPerfect training will be held regionally for groups when the institutions are within four weeks of starting.
6. Regular internet-based sessions on specific topics will be scheduled.
We expect to streamline the work of the Outreach Counselors and the Consultants by providing a set list of topics, and by using established metadata fields from earlier WHO projects. New project participants will choose a topic from a short list we will offer them. The topics might be barns, railroads, neighborhoods, founding families, dairies. We would continue to build on our existing collaboration by adopting the Oshkosh Public Library’s barns metadata; the Central Wisconsin Digitization Project’s railroad metadata; and the
- The counselors and consultants would have an easier time training and helping because there would be a limited amount of metadata for them to learn and teach.
- Most
- It would make collaboration with a neighboring institution easier because the subject and the metadata would be ready-made.
- It would give everyone a focus for collection building, and collaborative sharing.
Certification:
After the first year of the grant period, Wisconsin Heritage Online will begin issuing certification to institution participants who successfully complete all component training and a project. Certification for successful completion means the individual/institution has:
· Started a new project with at least 50 records (repetition)
· Added at least 2/3 of the records after the trainer has left (passed the test)
· Produced images and metadata meeting minimum Wisconsin Heritage Online guidelines, which will qualify to be added to the Wisconsin Heritage Online site (sufficient quality)
Certification benefits:
· For
· For institutions - provides valuable free training to their staff/volunteers and is an indication of the quality of the training that they can point to/build on.
· Gives their staff some standing for passing on what they've learned.
· For individuals - is potentially a transferable job skill; resume fodder; professional development credit.
· The WiLS/Wisconsin Heritage Online brand name - gets it out there and develops synergy "
Heritage Online certification = quality"
***************************************************************************************
Survey Findings:
Between our educational work with these groups and an analysis of the survey, we have identified two primary challenges among the small historical society and museum groups.
1. Institutions generally lack a steady source of funding, although there is considerable interest in digitization.
2. Small historical societies and museums are frequently staffed with volunteers. It is difficult to introduce new technology in this volunteer base, which often has low technology knowledge as well as a high turnover rate.
Survey Data:
· Hosted digital collection service
40% of respondents maintain their own website
35% pay someone else to maintain a website
25% have a site maintained at no cost by a volunteer
Comment: Having a hosted digital collection would allow many of these institutions to have an internet presence without having to purchase, install and maintain a server or complicated software.
· Popular materials for digitization projects
90% of respondents have bound, typed or printed documents
86% have unbound, typed or printed documents
94% have photographs
· Extent of cataloging information
67% of respondents describe the items in a collection individually recording item name, description, extent, value, donor name, collection name, and other details.
· Computer-based tracking or cataloging of material
28% use a computer database program (Excel, FileMaker Pro)
30% use a computer-based collection management program such as PastPerfect
Comment: The hosted service provided by the Wisconsin Historical Society uses CONTENTdm. CONTENTdm will import and export, comma-delimited files, which means data from the systems used by 58% of the survey respondents could be imported.
· Use of controlled vocabulary either locally developed or national
59% have personal name lists
63% have broad subject lists
· Use of a standard classification scheme
32% use Chenhall’s
12% use Library of Congress
· Computer access or ownership
85% of respondents own or have access to a computer
Comment: We did not survey how much memory or hard disk space they had. We have been advising sites to purchase external hard drives for digital image storage.
· Ability to select digital project materials
83% of respondents said they could choose a distinct set of material for digitization
Comment: One of the problems we have observed is that many sites do not have complete inventories or catalog records for their collections and thus are not able to easily choose material for digitization.
· Intent to digitize in next 6-12 months. In the three categories listed above:
19% of respondents have plans to digitize.
23% of respondents have plans to digitize other types of material
· Sites that have digitized items already
59% of respondents
· Percent of collection digitized
64% of respondents have digitized 5% or less
· Providing access to digitized images
95% of respondents provide access to museum/historical society staff and volunteers only
10% provide online access to the public
· Training information
53% of respondents can afford to pay up to $100 for a training session
65% think $100 will cover a full-day
78% of respondents expect travel to and from training to occur within a one day period
History of
You can find out more about Wisconsin Heritage Online at http://wiheritage.pbwiki.com, the resources and development site, and explore the digital resources of Wisconsin Heritage Online at http://wisconsinheritage.org .
Page Information
|
Wiki Information |
Recent PBwiki Blog Posts |
Create your own business wiki!