Pocahontas County History Preservation, Digitization, Community

The security updates are in place, and the Archives are once again active. I've spruced up the place a bit with clip art, thanks to these websites:

• Clip Art Collection is provided by www.rrhistorical.com(gifs)
• Free Clip Art from download-free-pictures.com(jpgs)

The current edition of History News Network's "Website of the Month" feature highlights 20 history Websites, with topics ranging from a facsimile edition of the lurid publication "Wet with Blood: An Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln's Cloak" to Digital Vaults, an on line tour of the National Archives.

If you're looking for some snowy day reading, you're bound to find something here that will interest you!

If you've tried to access our "Digital Archive," you'll know we were off-line for a while, due to a small but fatal error with software updates. It's fixed now, and I hope to add large bundles of digital images as soon as the infernal updating process is complete.

If you're interested in such things, I've been detailing the Drupal update process. Step One and Step 2 are completed. I sincerely hope there will not be more than five steps total, but software updates usually surprise me, and not in a good way.

Following the old computer user's adage "If it's not backed up in three locations, it's not backed up," I've been making sure all our digital materials are adequately backed up. It's easy to let data acquisition get far ahead of annotation and backup.

Via Library Law Blog, I found out about Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums. It's available as a free pdf, and also as a print book. Here's the abstract:

Digital communications technologies have led to fundamental changes in the ways that cultural institutions fulfil their public missions of access, preservation, research, and education. Institutions are developing publicly-accessible websites in which users can visit online exhibitions, search collection databases, access images of collection items, and in some cases create their own digital content. Digitization, however, also raises the possibility of copyright infringement. "Copyright and Digitization" aims to assist understanding and compliance with copyright law across libraries, archives, and museums. It discusses the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of “risk assessment” when conducting any digitization project. It also includes two cases studies, examining digitizing oral histories and student work. As well as free availability here, print copies are available for purchase via createspace.

As a supplement to the Pocahontas County Historic Preservation Project report, I've uploaded a sample image gallery of the sort that would be included with any digitization project DVD's that would be distributed to the county libraries and court house. These galleries should make browsing the digital collection DVD's easier and more enjoyable.

The gallery sample represents about 15% of the Susan A. Price Collection in the Pocahontas County Historical Society paper archives. Dr. Price, who graduated from medical school in 1903, left several dozen photographic images and many more letters and typewritten manuscripts. Some of her writings were on professional topics, while others incuded family stories and local history.

Abstract

18 months into the project, the Pocahontas County Historic Preservation project has moved out of the development phase and into "production." Necessary equipment and software have been acquired, the website, Pocahontas County History: Preservation, Digitization, Community. http://pocahontascohistory.org/community is up and running, the server-side database has been populated, and scanning of historic documents is underway. Accomplishments for 2009 include:

Goals of the Digitization Project

• To facilitate preservation of historic materials through digitization.
• To make freely available as much material as possible, over the web and through local libraries, museums, and historic sites.
• To behave in a scholarly, courteous, and responsible manner to those who create or donate historic materials and to those who wish to access such material for noncommercial purposes. This must include acting in accordance with copyright, property, and privacy laws.

Digitization has tremendous potential to enhance preservation of historic materials, and to make all types of information available to interested parties around the world at little cost. However, it also presents novel problems in intellectual property rights. Who owns the rights to reproduce materials, and what may be done with the digital copies? There have been many changes in intellectual property rights law in the last 20 years, and there are few simple, straightforward answers to these questions.

I believe there are some cases in which we can use materials without fear of infringing anyone's rights.

The West Virginia Department of Culture and History has a list of published Pocahontas County History resources. They provide links to online versions of two resources,

Harper, Enid. History of Knapp's Creek Community Consisting of the The Hills, Forst, Knapp's Creek and Minnehaha Neighborhoods, Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Morgantown, West Virginia, Agricultural Extension Division, 1924 (On-line version).
Xwv 1. Agr 3. 2: H3.

and

Wilson, Mrs. Stanley. History of Minnehaha Springs Community, Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Morgantown, West Virginia, Agricultural Extension Division, 1928 (On-line version).
Xwv 1. Agr 3. 2: W5.

Another reference on their list is available in its entirety as a pdf file from Google Books: Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County by William T. Price (1901),

Earlier this month, the Archon Database for the Pocahontas County Historical Society went "live." You can now browse descriptions of catalogued holdings, sorted by collection titles and collection creators.

Some of the most interesting material (in my opinion) is located in the Price family collections. I will be digitizing this material starting in April, and making selections available in the Archon database.

Watch this space for further announcements!

• Online Archive. I am in the middle of installing Archon, an "Online Archival Information System," on this server. Once it's up and running, I will load the catalog information for collections of papers currently in the Pocahontas County Historical Society's archive. The next steps will be digitizing those materials, uploading them to the Web, and linking them to the catalog entries. In the meantime, if you'd like to see another collection using Archon, check out The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois Archives.
• Content Management System for Pocahontas County History. Once this is in place, site visitors will be able to become active participants by registering as users. "Users" will be able to post comments, contribute to forums, and upload text and images. You'll be able to show us your pictures and tell us your stories, as well as viewing and reading ours.