Digital Possibilities Webinar Series

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) and the Florida Virtual Campus Library Services (FLVC) are pleased to host the summer 2026 digitization webinar series Digital Possibilities!

Programs throughout June and July will highlight strategies for the digitization of audio recordings, musical instruments, and textual collections; participatory transcription projects; AI pilots for metadata creation and transcription; a consortium model of sharing digital equipment; and a consortium model of collaborative digital collections.

Learn from innovative speakers at the Chicago Collections Consortium, City of Chicago's Office of the City Clerk, FLVC, Illinois Wesleyan University, Newberry Library, Revs Institute, the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of West Florida.

Library, archive, and museum workers are invited to register for each session of interest below in this Professional Development Alliance series.

Webinars

Session 1: Tending the Community - Building and Sustaining a Crowdsourced Transcription Project

June 3, 11:00 a.m. Central Time / 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time

Newberry Transcribe invites volunteers to help unlock the Newberry Library's handwritten historical collections — one document at a time. In this webinar, Digital Services Librarian Jen Wolfe discusses the philosophy behind the project, the outreach strategies that have built an active volunteer community, and the ongoing work of sustaining a transcription program after launch. Attendees will come away with a framework for thinking about crowdsourced transcription not as a technical problem but as a community relationship — one that remains meaningful even in an age of AI.

Learn more and register to attend.

Session 2: Strategies for the Digitization of Municipal Archives: The Chicago City Council Audio Recordings, 1970-2012

June 10, 1:00 p.m. Central Time / 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time

In 2024 Chicago's Office of the City Clerk was awarded a Recordings at Risk grant by the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize a collection of City Council meeting audio recordings that span 40 years of Chicago political history. In this webinar, Matt Messbarger will explain the specific challenges faced and strategies developed to plan and complete this large-scale project with a focus on access and preservation of a unique record of Chicago history.

Learn more and register to attend. 

Session 3: Digitization in a Box: Imagine the Possibilities!

June 23, 1:00 p.m. Central Time / 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time

The FLVC Digital Services + OER team, led by Rebel-Cummings-Sauls, will describe the “Digitization in a Box” Program — its origin, development, launch, and progress. Windy Gamble, of North Florida College, will share her institution’s journey in using the equipment, learning from FLVC's training, and succeeding in digitization as a newbie.

Learn more and register to attend.

Session 4: Digital Realities and Possibilities for a Sousa Archives Researcher

July 8, 1:00 p.m. Central Time / 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time

The University of Illinois’ Sousa Archives and Center for American Music is both a special collections music archives and museum whose historical collections document diverse music cultures, legacies, and technologies in North, Central, and South America as well as portions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Our collections are meant to be actively engaged by people of all ages and music backgrounds and abilities. Our philosophy is grounded in providing access to our music collections using all available resources and technologies to enable our visitors to engage with our collections physically, intellectually, and actively. In this presentation, Scott Schwartz will highlight how the Sousa Archives approaches on-site and online public engagement to its music collections using some of today’s digital technologies.

Learn more and register to attend.

Session 5: Meet the Chicago Collections Consortium and Revs Institute

 July 15, 10:00 a.m. Central Time / 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time

The Chicago Collections Consortium (CCC) is a membership organization of 60+ institutions composed of public and private universities, public libraries, special libraries, museums, and other repositories with collections that chronicle the rich history of Chicago. Its portal, EXPLORE Chicago Collections, is its flagship initiative, providing "one stop shopping": a site for researchers, teachers, students, and the public to find digital images and locate archival holdings on Chicago topics without searching individual institutions' online catalogs one at a time. Founded in 2012 with twelve governing members, CCC has since grown to 60+ members. Ellen Keith, Executive Director, will discuss the portal, the organization's other outreach activities, and the organization's next steps in its second decade.

Revs Institute will share how they are embracing emerging technologies and digital dissemination to expand access, enhance discovery, and preserve specialized knowledge.  Arthur Carlson, Director of Archives and Research Center - Revs Institute, will highlight current projects at Revs Institute including a machine learning metadata generation project, the development of a specialized large language learning model to support research, and efforts to document and share specialized at-risk knowledge and share that with the world.

Learn more and register to attend.

Session 6: Strategic Approaches to Transcription

July 29, 1:00 p.m. Central Time / 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time

Liz Bloodworth, Illinois Wesleyan University, will discuss the use of AI tools for transcription of both oral history interviews and handwritten text documents. With increasing demands on staff time, especially in small shop archives, AI offers an opportunity to enhance the discoverability of archival materials through efficient transcription. Liz will share tips for using AI tools ethically and responsibly, stressing the importance of human review throughout the process. 

Then, Chris Levesque will discuss digital engagement in the University of West Florida’s Citizen Archivist Projects. During Library Week 2025 and 2026, the UWF University Libraries hosted participatory transcription events of letters and ship logs from their Digital Archives. This effort built on the well-known National Archives' Citizen Archivist model to engage students, faculty, and the larger UWF community. This talk will discuss selection of materials, implementation of the project, and lessons learned.

Learn more and register to attend.