North Country Digital History Project Now Open to All

The North Country Digital History Project, until now a pilot project, has been opened to participation by all libraries, archives, museums, and local history repositories in the region. There is no charge to participate in the project, which is located at history.nnyln.net

Some of the various participants and digital collections under development are:

• St. Lawrence Historical Society - Rushton Collection
• SUNY Potsdam - Crane School photographs
• Clarkson - Clarkson Family Photographs,  Clarkson Family History (mainly text), and  Clarkson University History (photographs and text)
• Saranac Lake Free Library - Cure Cottages materials
• SUNY Canton - Aggie Voice/Student newspapers
• SUNY Plattsburgh - Plattsburgh Barracks materials
• Akwesasne - Maps of St. Regis Mohawk Reservation
• Paul Smith’s - Hotel materials
• The Potsdam Public Museum - Potsdam in the ‘40s

The NCDH features use of ContentDM software and jointly developed regional standards for copyright, scanning, subject headings, and geographic names. Participants are given the necessary software and training to load historic materials onto the site for on-line use by researchers, local historians, teachers, and students.

The North Country Digital History working group, which has been meeting for more than one year, has cooperatively developed consensus concerning type and format of the metadata fields that permit each image record to be searched. Formats will include Article, Atlas, Bibliography, Book, Conference Paper, Correspondence, Diary, DVD, Game, Globe, Index, Journal, Magazine, Map, Minutes, Motion Picture Film, Multimedia Learning Object, Music (sound), Music Score, Narration (sound), Natural Sound, Newsletter, Newspaper, Postcard, Proceedings, Report, Review, Illustration, Painting, Photograph, Print, Speech, Survey, Thesis, Video.

Most NCDH participants have loaded the newest ContentDM software and use that application for data entry. The working group is also investigating the use of Past Perfect records as a source for metadata.

There will be a working session for all current and potential participants on Wednesday, November 30 at 10:00 a.m. at the Network office in Potsdam. Organizations that would like to participate in the North Country Digital History Project should contact John Hammond (john@nnyln.org) at (315) 265-1119.