Building Digital Archives with Minimal Staffing

The CARLI Archives Task Force was pleased to host this two-day online program Building Digital Archives with Minimal Staffing.

Digitization can help bring your archival materials to life by making them accessible and easy to use in a variety of projects and settings. There are many reasons to start digitizing your institution’s holdings, and likely just as many stakeholders who want an institution's archival materials digitized. If you do not have a digitization department, this work can seem daunting—even if you do have a digitization department, you might have good reasons to supplement their output. This webinar covered getting started on digitization projects in the archives when you do not have many resources.

Session included information on equipment recommendations, digitization workflows, metadata, and platforms and tools for managing, accessing, and working with digitized or born digital materials. During the webinar, presenters discussed advocating for resources, project planning, and documentation, along with demonstrations.

This two-day webinar was held on May 14 and May 15, 2025 from 1:00-4:00 p.m. (CDT) on each day.

Day 1: May 14, 2025

Welcome and Introduction (length of Recording: 2:10)

Recording

Presenter: Presenter: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University

Equipment Recommendations, Pricing, Scanning, and Post Processing (Length of Recording: 1:27:20)

Recording
Slides

This session focused on having one student or one staff person available and then scaling up according to needs/available resources including:

• Basics of getting started
• Image standards
• Making the most of your available labor, budget, and other resources
• Post processing, including but not limited to
  • File management
  • Naming conventions
  • Standardization/normalization
  • OCR/transcription
  • QC procedures

Presenters: Karmine Beecroft, Illinois State University and Ellie Harman, Illinois State University

Metadata (Length of Recording: 39:28)

Recording
Slides
Illinois State University Data Dictionary Template

This session included a basic overview of metadata elements; what minimal metadata can look like; a discussion of providing access as opposed to perfection in item-level description, and digital rights statements.

Presenters: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University and Ashley Howdeshell, Northeastern Illinois University

Digital Preservation (Length of Recording: 28:35)

Recording
Slides - to come

This session included a basic overview of minimal, realistic digital preservation; the importance of a workflow; and resources for where to find more information.

Presenter: Marcella Lees, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Day 2: May 15, 2025

Welcome and Introduction (Length of recording: 1:31)

Recording

Presenter: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University

Platforms and Tools - Demonstrations

Demonstration: Preservica (Length of recording: 26:27)

Recording
Slides

Presenter: Marcella Lees, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Demonstration: Collection Builder (Length of recording: 25:21)

Recording
Slides

Presenter: Greer Martin, Loyola University Chicago

Demonstration: ContentDM (Length of Recording: 27:04)

Recording
Slides

Presenter: Emily Baldoni, Illinois State University

Demonstration: Omeka (Time: 18:31)

Recording
Slides

Presenter: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University

Demonstration: Digital Commons (Length of Recording: 19:40)

Recording
Slides

Presenter: Ashley Howdeshell, Northeastern Illinois University

Outreach (Length of Recording: 19:31)

Recording
Slides

This session included information about:

• Creating exhibits using Omeka, Digital Commons, and other tools.
• Teaching with digital collections including working with faculty, thematic digital collections, and digital publications.

Presenters: Ashley Howdeshell, Northeastern Illinois University and Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University

Making the Case for Digitization (Length of Recording: 22:24)

Recording
Slides

This session included getting administrators interested in supporting digitization including:
    Project scope and realistic expectations
        Developing accurate timeframes
        Managing expectations and production promises
        Compelling project proposals
        Alumni and other interest groups
    Documentation, Statistics

Presenters: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University, Ashley Howdeshell, Northeastern Illinois University, Marcella Lees, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Presenters

Karmine Beecroft is Milner Library’s Digitization Center Coordinator. They have a bachelor’s degree in history from Michigan State University and a master’s in information science from the University of Michigan.

 

Emily Baldoni (she/her) is a Metadata Librarian at Illinois State University, where she manages metadata for digital collections and coordinates ingests into ISU's CONTENTdm repository. Prior to coming to ISU in 2023, she worked in digital and special collections at Georgetown University and the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Rebecca Fitzsimmons is a Special Collections Librarian at Illinois State University. She is the curator of the Children’s and Historical Textbooks Collection and works extensively with the Rare Books and Manuscripts collections. She provides instruction, reference, and collection development services, curates and designs digital and physical exhibits ranging from small to large installations, and engages in a variety of digital scholarship projects and initiatives in the library, with an eye to centering special collections and archival materials in this work.

Ellie Harman is Milner Library’s Digitization Technician. She has a bachelor’s degree in photography and graphic design from Olivet Nazarene University and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. 

 

Ashley Howdeshell serves as the University Archivist at Northeastern Illinois University. In this role, she collects, preserves, and facilitates access to NEIU administrative records, special collections, and materials documenting campus and student life. Ashley also develops policies and procedures for the effective management of both digital and physical records and provides instruction on primary source research. She holds an MLS from Indiana University, specializing in Archives and Records Management. 

Marcella Lees (she/her) serves as the Digital Archivist for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. In this role she leads digitization initiatives and works to collect, preserve, and provide access to born-digital and digitized records documenting the university and Southern Illinois history. Marcella also serves as an instructor in the history department teaching archival processing and digital archives and is currently acting as the interim University Archivist providing reference, instruction, and collection development. She holds an MSLIS from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign specializing in Archives and Preservation.

Greer Martin (she/her) is the Metadata Technologies Librarian at Loyola University Chicago, where she manages digital projects and coordinates metadata interoperability across library platforms. She supports faculty-led digital scholarship and digital collections using a variety of platforms, including Preservica, Omeka, Collective Access, and Collection Builder. Greer received her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a specialization in data curation.