VRA Conference Minneapolis 2024

The pastmapr Project - Spatial History Simplified
Andreas Knab and Kevin Borg

This paper is a presentation of the pastmapr project, an open-source tool for visualizing historic maps, images, and stories on the web. Originally developed in 2017 and updated and extended since then, pastmapr allows students to overlay scans of historic maps and plans onto modern street or satellite maps and mark points of interest with descriptive text and images. Users can then interactively explore the content by toggling map overlays, adjust overlay transparency, and filter markers. pastmapr is used in a teaching environment bringing together students from a variety of disciplines, including history and geography. All the underlying technologies used in the project are open source, and the default map layers included are the publicly available OpenStreetMaps and Esri satellite images. Examples are available online at https://pastmapr.lib.jmu.edu/

Effective Digital Storytelling: Tools, Techniques, and Best Practices
Otto Luna

This paper will present various free digital platforms designed for digital storytelling and sharing oral histories online. We’ll explore platforms like ArcGIS StoryMaps, Adobe Express’s webpage-building tool, and storytelling tools from the Knight Lab at Northwestern University (such as StorylineJS and TimelineJS). I’ll also discuss examples of how I’ve used some of these tools with undergraduate art history students. Additionally, we’ll cover best practices for effective digital storytelling, including selecting the right platform, crafting compelling narratives, thoughtfully incorporating sound, using high-quality visuals, adding interactive elements, and ensuring accessibility.

Measuring Impact for Sustainable Digital Projects
Dominique Luster, Binky Lush, Linda Ballinger

In 2023, the Judy Chicago Research Portal presented a case study in hosting and developing an online portal aggregating the archives of a contemporary feminist artist held in multiple institutions. The project represents a model for collaboration, iterative development, and improving access and discoverability for both feminist art archives and collections at smaller institutions.

This presentation builds on that case study by delving into the measurable impact of the use and impact strategy employed by the Judy Chicago Research Portal. The proposal seeks to offer attendees practical strategies on how their libraries and archives can increase awareness and engagement with users of their digital projects, using the Judy Chicago Research portal as a study.

Like other digital library projects, the team behind the Research Portal is committed to ensuring its sustainability and promoting it intentionally in the academic community. However, the team's unique approach has combined conference presentations and social media engagement to enhance research visibility and reach. We will share insights for the non-social media expert on how we analyze website visits, user downloads, and social media engagement. Additionally, we will discuss how to leverage usage data via Google Scholar and website analytics to further investigate a project's success.

In this presentation, we will share key findings and data on how this strategy has increased research impact, present case studies highlighting specific successes from our collaboration model, and engage in open discussion on how similar digital projects can design a results-driven impact strategy.

Decades of Digital Asset Mismanagement: The Good, the Bad, and the Depressing
Bonnie Rosenberg

The Art Institute of Chicago’s digital asset crisis began with the advent of digital photography. As dark rooms were converted to digital photography studios, files started to pile up. Images lived on servers, discs, hard drives, and bespoke—often broken—repositories. The migration effort born from this backlog is both a cautionary and laudatory tale. When given an expanse of time to right the wrongs of the past, we did so with skill. But what we really needed to fix this problem was a time machine.

Rethinking Access and Discovery for Large Digital Image Collections
Rachel Jaffe and Sue Chesley Perry

As we approach another digital asset management system (DAMS) migration, the UC Santa Cruz Library is taking a look at our past practices and strategies in order to find more sustainable methods to managing legacy content and providing access to our new digital image collections. In this session, we will explore alternative strategies for discovery and access to these collections, with a focus on sustainability, usability, and the needs of our users. We will discuss the pros, cons, and unintended consequences of the three different approaches to access and discovery we’ve employed over the years: Comprehensive and custom description Mass digitization with iterative description Hierarchical metadata with a highly structured model By shifting our view of migration as just another step in digital object life cycle, and rethinking our access strategy to be more proactive, questions of sustainability and value arise, including: How much of these collections get used? Who are they being used by and to what end? Are they serving the needs of our patrons? Is the descriptive metadata work sustainable? Who is going to do all this work? We will share the ways we’re now approaching discovery, such as employing user testing, designing metadata and files that meet user needs, and being more selective about what we make accessible.

Museums and Libraries: A Roadmap for Collaboration
Jill Kambs and Peter Gorman

The Chazen Museum of Art and the UW-Madison Libraries have collaborated to extend the Libraries' digital collections infrastructure to meet the discovery, digital management, and preservation needs of the museum. With a grant from the Mellon Foundation, we were able to incorporate new kinds of resources and workflows into our digital library platform, and implement the Libraries’ digital preservation service. Altogether, the resulting workflows and preservation service can now be offered to meet the needs of future external partners. The Libraries' existing architecture was key to the project’s success: a single digital ecosystem built from loosely-coupled components. We will demonstrate how this ecosystem ensures that 1) new features developed for this project automatically become available for future collaborations, 2) project partners can take advantage of selected components that best suit their needs, and 3) sustainability features of our core infrastructure are automatically applied to new partnerships. Standardized, flexible project management also contributed to successful collaboration. Using existing procedures for onboarding new project partners, focus groups to gather requirements, and an iterative, agile development process to show progress early and maintain momentum, we were able to quickly begin work and stay on track to meet grant milestones.

The Developing Leadership Abilities panel aims to both encourage involvement in VRA leadership positions and share stories and lessons from people in leadership roles. The session will also touch on challenges related to taking on such a responsibility and address ways to balance a leadership role with everyday work and life.

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has been digitizing a collection of more than 1,500 film negatives shot by Rauschenberg throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. These images are critical to research for the artist’s forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné. Anne Boissonnault, Digital Asset Specialist, will discuss this year-and-a-half long project, and concurrent and related initiatives, from pilot selection, to copy stand photography, to cataloging and metadata cleanup.

The Center for Creative Photography has recently completed the digitization of Lola Alvarez Bravo’s collection of negatives. Numbering over 30,000 negatives in different formats, this project is the culmination of a five year digitization effort. In this session Miles Scott, Digital Archivist at CCP, will discuss the scope of the project from beginning to end. He will also discuss tracking progress, reusing metadata, storage and public access.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden digitized 312 artworks (2D and 3D) by Marcel Duchamp in preparation for a two-year exhibition showcasing all works from a single donor, including condition assessment, cataloging, photography, and exhibition photography of these works. Julia Murphy, Head of Documentation and Archives, will share the digitization process from private donor’s home to museum gallery installation. "

The Detroit Institute of Arts is the home of a monumental fresco cycle executed by Diego Rivera in 1932-1933. The process was documented by Ford Motor Company photographer W.J. Stettler, and the DIA Research Library & Archives preserves a set of approximately 378 prints. In addition, the archives has 44 of Stettler's negatives which are in various stages of degradation. Archivist James E. Hanks will discuss recent activities to preserve the primary sources as well consider the value of re-scanning materials, and how this project has enhanced outreach for the DIA Research Library & Archives. The DIA plans to include archival imagery in a future iteration of its digital asset management system, as well as expanding the use of linked data to provide access to collection items. As Diego Rivera's murals are some of the most popular works in the museum, the archives has an important role in art historical documentation.

Implementing Local Contexts in Rights Management to Ground Indigenous Data Sovereignty
Emma Carter

Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has incorporated Local Contexts as part of its standard protocol for object research and collection care. Newfields is committed to being an ethical steward of its art collections and Local Contexts provides tools to better our standards of care and communication with Indigenous communities. I will explain how Local Contexts' Cultural Institutional Notices have been incorporated into our collection management system and describe our future plans for Labels and consultations with Indigenous communities. Newfields continues to work to be in compliance with NAGPRA regulations and to be a better partner to Indigenous communities, locally, nationally, and internationally.

Creating a Guide for the course "Decolonization, Activism, and Hope: Changing the Way We See Native America"
Colette Lunday Brautigam

This presentation will detail how a digital collections librarian collaborated with a professor for the course “Decolonization, Activism, and Hope: Changing the Way We See Native America.” The students had a term-long assignment that culminated in a poster session and they could only use Indigenous sources. The professor wanted a LibGuide to support the assignment and worked with the librarian to make it a great resource. The students needed to assess sources and also use many resources outside library and library databases. This required them to learn to use research skills and critical thinking skills on the open web. The resources involved were videos, podcasts, OA journals, websites, and some journals in JSTOR and the catalog.

Acquisitions of Films from the Global South
Iris Yellum

Streaming media continues to be an essential resource for faculty and students. Despite wider availability and awareness of streaming for university libraries, difficulties remain in acquiring both physical and streaming media. It can be particularly difficult to acquire films from the Global South. The increasingly consumerist approach in higher education can mean that our collections are simply not a representation of broader film production trends. Even contemporary films featured in prominent film festivals can be difficult to acquire, especially those in regional languages. As academic library vendors continue to acquire each other, this is a loss for university libraries seeking to build diverse collections and provide access for undergraduate courses and film scholars. While we must certainly make choices about what to curate, it is important to consider how the democratization of filmmaking should be reflected in collection development. Our film collections increasingly look similar to each other as we outsource some or all of our film acquisitions to media vendors. This paper will discuss the importance of building a diverse film collection and the obstacles to achieving that.