We’re so excited to present to you our very first Year In Review!
Every year our team and our members accomplish wonderful things, and we want to celebrate our work and theirs. Please take a moment to look back on 2018 with us and read about what we’ve done – and what we’re working on for 2019. Continue reading OurDigitalWorld’s 2018 Year In Review
In November, the West Vancouver Memorial Library commemorated the 100th anniversary of Armistice by releasing their “Research to Remember: In Their Own Words” project – a collection of three new video interviews with veterans.
The library held a screening and live discussion with veteran Ted Langley on November 11th, and launched the online collection on November 1st. All the interviews are edited into short topical segments, fully transcribed, and text-searchable. This part of the project follows upon the library’s educational resources work developing primary-source packages about some of the soldiers whose names appear on the West Vancouver cenotaph. Continue reading West Vancouver Memorial Library’s “Research to Remember” project
In Belleville, from May 8 to May 10th, the AAO will be holding their Annual Conference. We’re on the program speaking about our efforts to work with archives, libraries, and newspaper publishers to ensure the ongoing stewardship of Ontario’s local news. Our session is on Friday at 10:45am: Continue reading We’re Speaking at the Archives Association of Ontario Annual Conference
We’re so delighted to present the Waterloo Public Library’s digital newspaper collection. In the past few months we’ve help them digitize and add 125,000 pages of publications including the Waterloo Chronicle, the Chronicle Telegraph, and the County Chronicle. You can now see complete ranges from 1893 onward, and partial issues dating back to 1868! Continue reading Waterloo Public Library’s digitized historical newspaper collection
We’re delighted to announce the publication of our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries! The report is now available for download.
We asked eighty questions over the summer of 2018, and our obliging survey respondents gave us some great answers about how they’re tackling community history, heritage collections, and the demands of the digital age. Thank you to every public library in Ontario that responded!
Now you can read all the results before you join us at our OLA SuperConference presentation next week.
Continue reading Read our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries
VITA member organization Newmarket Public Library recently got some press for their completed digitization of a rare local history book:
Written by Ethel Willson Trewhella, only 600 copies of the book were printed. Four of those copies were donated to Newmarket Public Library’s history collection. And one of those was chosen to be scanned, electronically digitized, and uploaded to the library’s Digital History Collection.
“We are very happy to have this important book available in a digitized version that anyone can access through our website,” says Angele Barnett, the library technician in charge of the project. “Especially since the several copies of the book that we received over the years have become worn.”
Having the book digitized provides everyone with an opportunity to read it online, which will help in preserving the original copies from further wear and tear.
We’re happy to be a part of this project and to be able to share Ethel Trewhella’s work with the VITA Digital Toolkit. You can browse and search the book here.
Last week our three University of Toronto iSchool students presented their practicum projects at the semester’s showcase.
Local publication The Review has put the call out for more family photos:
Go through your attic! Clean out your closets! Empty that shoe box under your bed! Public libraries throughout Prescott-Russell are looking for old photos of local francophone heritage.
Digital Prescott-Russell is a project created to digitize photos from the 19th and early 20th centuries that depict the lives and traditions of the region’s French-speaking residents.
The first phase of the project involves collecting donated photos taken before 1950 that were taken in Prescott-Russell. The library branches will index and catalog each photo before scanning them and making them available online. All seven public libraries in the united counties are participating in the project.
We’re excited to see what turns up in this exciting solicitation period. Keep your eyes on the Digital Prescott-Russell VITA collection for more uploads and news!
Starting on Saturday, Oakville Public Library’s fourth annual A Day In The Life photo project launches.
Using the VITA Digital Toolkit‘s Contribution module, OPL gathers photographs from the community snapped within a 24-hour period (allowing a week for community members to upload and describe their works) and shares them in their VITA collection – they’re also curated into a virtual exhibit for viewing by year. So far they’ve built up their collections with hundreds of submitted photographs from all over the community!
We’ll be at the 2019 Ontario Library Association SuperConference in January! We’ll be presenting in a session about our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries, and we’ll be manning our usual vendor booth in the Expo Hall.
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