You can still register for our next two webinars with the Southern Ontario Library Service, about ODW’s work with public libraries in the province:
Digitizing local history collections with VITA Toolkit
Tuesday November 27th – 10am to 11am
Cramahe Township Public Library was awarded a CSIF Ontario Provincial Grant to implement an extensive local history digitization project in 2013. In collaboration with the then Heritage Cramahe Chair and OurDigitalWorld, the project took off and has been active ever since.
Originally the library employed two people to digitize and describe maps, photos, postcards, documents, letters, biographies, reports, artifacts, the Colborne Women’s Institute scrapbooks, and the only existing copies of the now-defunct Colborne Chronicle Newspaper and other local newspapers using the VITA Digital Toolkit.
Rather than stopping there, Mary Norton has leveraged evidence of local impact to maintain part time staff and keep the online local history collection growing and more dynamic. We’ll discuss the value in local collaborations, using the VITA Toolkit for online engagement, and in the impact of digitizing local history collections to make them freely searchable and discoverable to community members locally and across the globe.
Helping patrons search Ontario’s digital community newspapers collections
Tuesday December 4th – 10am to 11am
OurDigitalWorld offers access to one of the largest cumulative collections of Ontario newspapers online today (news.ourontario.ca). The collections are digital index records and digitized newspaper content from hundreds of local organizations, content that has been growing and changing with technology and patron expectations. As a result, end users — your local patrons and users from around the world — are searching these collections to find keywords, family names, photographs, or specific date ranges and they might experience different result sets, depending on the source. This session will help you help your users understand the collections, how to effectively search for best results, bookmark and export their results, and also identify how to follow up for more information on local newspaper content. We’ll also talk about encouraging and promoting discovery of your local newspaper collections.