The South Central Library System (SCLS) has services and resources available to assist staff at SCLS member libraries with digitizing their local history materials. Many materials that are digitized are made available on the Recollection Wisconsin and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) websites.
General digitization project workflow
- SCLS staff assists with:
- Project planning
- Providing digitization equipment and training on using the equipment and software
- Providing metadata templates and training on creating metadata
- Coordinating having collections set-up in Recollection Wisconsin and the DPLA
- Uploading digitized materials to the content management platform CONTENTdm for harvesting to Recollection Wisconsin and the DPLA
- Library staff, volunteers, or interns are responsible for:
- Project preparation
- Sorting and organizing materials
- Obtaining copyright permissions as needed
- Digitizing
- Creating metadata
- Promoting the collection
- Project preparation
Types of local history materials that can be digitized and included on the Recollection Wisconsin website
- Visual images (photographs, slides, glass negatives, postcards, drawings, paintings, maps, blueprints, photo albums, scrapbooks)
- Manuscripts (hand-written documents, including journals, letters, diaries, ledgers)
- Printed text (books, yearbooks, articles, pamphlets, certificates, newsletters, reports)
- Audio and video (oral histories, speeches, recorded music, film footage)
- Physical objects (three-dimensional artifacts, including sculptures, textiles, housewares, clothing, tools)
(Source: Recollection Wisconsin-Digital Projects Toolkit-Project Planning )
To be included in Recollection Wisconsin, materials need to be either in the Public Domain or the copyright holder needs to grant permission to make the materials available online. (See the Recollection Wisconsin Copyright Policy)
Materials that will not be included on the Recollection Wisconsin website can be digitized for preservation purposes.
Newspaper Collections
SCLS does not support the digitization of newspaper collections. For information on newspaper digitization projects, see the Wisconsin Historical Newspaper Project.
SCLS Local History Digitization User Group email list
Subscribe here (only for library staff at SCLS member libraries)
Fees and Funding
Recollection Wisconsin currently does not charge onboarding fees, hosting fees, and harvesting fees. Thanks to the forward-thinking decision by the state of Wisconsin legislature to allocate funding for Recollection Wisconsin’s services in the biennial budget, the platform is able to waive all fees and provide services to the state’s cultural and historical heritage institutions free of charge to contributors. Furthermore, Recollection Wisconsin pledges to continue this fee-free arrangement as long as the state budget funds their services. CONTENTdm is hosted by the Milwaukee Public Library. External hard drives are provided to libraries with funding from the South Central Library System Foundation.