 Alright, good afternoon everyone I'm so excited to see a good group of folks here today. My name is Crystal Thomas I'm a member of the DLF project managers group which organizes webinar today about project management and working with external partners. We're a pretty informal group in DLF and we're really usually looking to provide information and support to project managers in our area of work because a lot of us don't receive formal training for it. And I'm very excited to have such an interesting panel of four speakers today to talk about their experiences. So how this will work today is each speaker will have about 10 minutes. I apologize for the dog that's losing its mind behind me. I have about 10 minutes to tell us about their project and their experience and then we'll have time at the end for questions. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it off to our first speaker today, Danielle. Hi everyone, I'm going to make this bigger one second. My name is Danielle Aforda. I'm a journalist at the library. I mentioned a little bit about this different service. I'm going to talk a little bit about a community archiving initiative started it within the Click Polish Marché community in Northern Alaska County, which is the county that library system is. So this is a post collecting initiative. So I'll talk a little bit about our work as well as community building that we've done there. So just a bit about the stakeholders in the project so there's us obviously so I work for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, which is a division of the public library system. We're a 15 branch library system and our special collections is housed inside of the branch dedicated to the study of Arkansas history art and genealogy. And then the other partner is sort of this amorphous historically Polish Marché community, which is a group of about 10 donors at this point but kind of a lot of tertiary people anytime I do a public program there's up to 75 community members and attendance so it's kind of a growing and changing number of people from a variety of different backgrounds but for the most part the people most actively involved in the project are an aging community. Most of them are retirement age or even, you know, upper upper 80s, sort of at the point where they're at the end of life and thinking about what's going to happen with their stuff. So they are primarily affiliated with a Catholic congregation there that has been active in the community since 1878. And they do harbor a little bit of a fear about ciders and they have a strong desire for privacy, which I've been told from them is culturally Polish from both them and other Polish folks that I've interacted with in the course of the project. The community itself has been kind of slowly had land taken away, as well as had been misrepresented bad intentions that sort of thing over the history of the community and so that was difficult when meeting people out there. I wanted to work with them because they are very historically underrepresented in the archival record. And it also met sort of a library strategic goal of reaching underrepresented groups as well as reaching out into the rural parts of our service area. Marche is about 15 miles from its closest library branch so it really is kind of out there, and the library hadn't really done anything there before. I first did just kind of traditional tabling as a library worker doing library card signups that sort of thing just to get my face out in the community and then I was able to make inroads and meet people. And we decided that a post custodial collecting initiative would work really well there. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about what that looks like in practice and kind of go into the nitty gritty of some of the workflows because I think as was mentioned at the beginning we're kind of thrown into project management in this field without any sort of guidance on what that looks like or how to effectively do it. And in this case you know I'm working with a lot of historic material that we're not going to keep and so how do I ensure that we do have good archival description and good record of these donations. So, whenever I work with the community, I've just kind of broken it up into three parts acquiring the material digitizing the material and then eventually returning it. The way that we've taken the approach to post custodial collecting is we provide the service of digitization with the agreement from the donor that they will allow us to provide access to it. So we kind of treat it as a born digital archival collection that we have kind of created the digital files for it's a little bit strange but it works really well in practice within our collecting context. We have a prior established deed of gift that we use for these projects that was created as part of an initiative to document the stories of Vietnam and Korean war veterans. We found that they were interested in continuing to hold on to their physical photographs and diaries and so a lot of times in conjunction with doing an oral history with the veteran, we would digitize material and return it. So we created a form as part of that process that I've been able to use for this project in Marche. And then the next question was how do we categorize the material. So, for the most part it made sense to create individual family collections from this material. So they kind of get you know the typical family name. And then all of the material inside of it will be born digital. In some cases somebody would just send me like a video or they would give me one photograph and creating an entire collection and going through that accessioning process was a lot for one, one item. So we decided to also create a an artificial Marche community history collection. We also created some preliminary scoping contents and biographical notes to try to document the history of the project within the framework of that finding it at that point. So once I have the material, we then digitize it. So for our digitization workflows they're pretty typical of what you would do in most archival settings, there were a couple of things we did differently. So in our institutional policies we don't always scan the back of a photograph if there's nothing on it, but in this context we are just to make sure that it is clear that there was nothing on the back, since we won't have the physical item. And then additionally, as you'll see on the next slide I use the system of sticky notes I know cringe archive sticky notes to document community provided descriptions so in many cases those were just scanned with the photograph to preserve that information to make sure that we could return the items to the donor in a timely manner, without me having to go back and forth with the donor to gather description, and without me having to take notes off the sticky notes they're just scanned with the photograph and the same scan. When I return the items I tried to make sure they were all returned within 14 business days of receipt, because these folks are not very trusting of outsiders of making sure these items get back to them in a timely manner. We still trust in the project and the library system as a whole. And so that's been something we've really prioritized so as soon as they come in the door we typically try to get them digitized very quickly and then returned. So this is sort of an example of what that community provided description looks like. At first whenever I met with the community I did bring a computer with me to visits and I took notes and a spreadsheet as I went through the photographs and documents with donors. But it was often difficult to cross associate my notes with the actual items once I returned to the library, and then I'd kind of have to go back to the donor and get clarification. So the sticky note system allows me instead to stick a note to the back of the item, or somewhere nondescript, not obviously not on the front of the photograph. And that ensured it stayed with the item through the digitization process and then I have something like the photograph here where I have the photograph with that provided description next to it. This is actually a sticky note that the donor put on the back for me because she saw I started doing that so whenever I picked up one batch of photos she had already done it for me, which was very kind. In this case she didn't know a lot of these people but she did have some information which is better than saying an identified group of students in front of the school. So, once these items are scanned we do add them to our institutional Amazon S3 instance with temporary identifiers. I take the provided community description with the identifiers and create rough notes based on what I've received so that's what this looks like. This way if I'm not able to process the collection myself because of some extenuating circumstance. Eventually there will be organized description and notes for the next archivist to work on it. I see here that I've left myself notes to ask specific community members for more information, which I intend to prioritize over getting archival description fully developed for these materials. And finally, how are we going to preserve this material long term. So like a lot of places we preserve all digital content on Amazon S3 including the spreadsheets that I mentioned. This is stored on Glacier as well. And every donor is given a flash drive with the digitized content in both TIFF and JPEG. A lot of them will never touch the TIFFs but I do want them to have that archival quality scan if they want it. Long term plans are to treat these items as we do other born digital content so we technically created the digital surrogates originally. In our archival description for born digital material, we include the original file name, which in this case will be that temporary identifier I mentioned created in the digitization process. A description of the item, and sometimes a link to the item within our archival collection. For this project we won't be providing wholesale public access in some cases we have been asked to not upload particular items, or they just don't have enough immediate research value to warrant adding to our digital repository. We provide access on a case by case basis as indicated in the restrictions on access note that we include in each finding aid with born digital content. I do plan to finish up processing all of the material we've received so far. By September of this year they have an annual festival and they've asked that I put something together so I plan to get some stuff uploaded to the repository create finding aids for the collections that we have so far, and to create maybe a story map or something along those lines to kind of connect the community to the collection in in an immediate way. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share these workflows I felt like I was starting from scratch in a lot of ways, and I didn't have a ton of examples to work from. If this finds the right person who can put the information to use in their repository, and my contact information is there, if that can be helpful to anyone. Thank you. Thank you Danielle. All right. Next up will be Brittany. Let's see if things in the way ready. Hello, fabulous presentation Danielle thank you. I'm going to follow up with a external partner project management case study from us you libraries that you that is Utah State University. My name is Brittany bird is on I am the digital project manager at Utah State University libraries. The essential function of my role is to lead the entire project lifecycle of internal and external project digital projects produced in partnership with various stakeholders and library departments. So today I am going to be discussing our latest project in the road of progress, the West side and I 15. This research project examines the history behind the infrastructure decisions and construction of interstate by 15. In 1946 this election, a section of what is now interstate 15 was proposed to be built as a super road intended to move traffic in and out of down of the downtown area. But for citizens of Salt Lake West side. This would put a highway directly through their community. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 transform the proposed West side highway into the state's first section of interstate, the building of the interstate system affected every American interstates made travel easier for a great number of people but they also destroyed homes and neighborhoods of others from activism to construction to the lasting consequences of the interstate. This exhibit tells the story of how the original section of the interstate in Utah completed in 1964, changed Salt Lake's West side. We place the story in the larger context of national interstate highway building during this period, writing for this exhibit was conducted in part by graduate students. This is the history 6020 public history theory and methods. The students use utilize archival materials, primarily held by the state of Utah to create this collaborative historical narrative of highway construction Salt Lake's West side and the wider historical context of the conflicts of the country. In 2023 as we contemplate yet another expansion of the wet of the interstate I 15, particularly in the West side again. We are using this to evaluate the long term consequences of such decisions, interstate highway construction in general both in Utah and across the nation. In part I selected this project because it is our most recent work released, but also because this is a project that is majority external in nature, meaning most of the primary stakeholders are, or entities are persons outside the library. Another reason it was selected for this webinar presentation is because it is a bit of a pilot project, one of which we have learned a lot from and are still learning from. So, I just wanted to create this timeline here about how this all came to be and how that happens at us you. The professor who initiated this project and helps sort of define the ideation of it. Professor Dr Rebecca Anderson, she is the lecture in at us you histories department, and she leads the public history track. She received a research inquiry from a state governmental agency, looking to partner and collaborate. So she worked with them and then we were consulted to be able to support and facilitate this project. So it's not just all of her on her own, and in addition to teaching as well. That has. So we were consulted, we prepared the project we within that we prepared the MOU the morning of understanding and that agency agreed to contribute funding for a position to be hired. We recently graduated graduate student for the, to be the sort of project assistant but mainly the lead researcher of the project. And then we made contact with the Utah State Archives to make sure that they were willing to work with us as well and they were more than happy to oblige. Eventually we hired the student position and also partnered with the professor to define the project and plan the project as it would be integrated into her public history course. So getting back to the stakeholders involved. This project is not only unique and it being the first research conversation of its kind in Utah that pulls stake and resources from multiple external partners. But also that it is a hybrid project of sorts. It's a community project, it's a class integrated project. It's a class, a highly student driven project and also partners with multiple governmental agencies and federal agencies. So this is sort of the map of it all we have a few people within the library that helped support and create this project. The professor, the graduate students, the history department, sort of within the immediate internal, but not library internal stakeholders. And then we have affiliate researchers so people in the local area who were already working on research towards this endeavor, who we partnered with to help craft and sculpt our contact, as well as neighboring universities involved in similar sort of things. So we have our state agencies, our state archives and the general public as our widest stakeholder. So for the purpose of this presentation, the principal external partners are a Utah State Agency which funded the project, the research for the project as well as the position. The Utah State Archives who insisted in answering research questions we had as we were sort of diving into the history of it all, and permitted digitization of several collections that were used in this project. So as the affiliate researcher the principal researcher we consulted on a regular basis Dr. Brad Westwood, he is the senior public historian at the Utah Department of Culture and Community Engagement, who visited the class provided peer review services and content support. So, who makes up the team, the team is always, it always has a number of people within. I want to make it I think it's important to establish that the team itself, even though it isn't externally partnered projects primarily the team itself is internal. So, I put this in just to note that while there are various people who help us was with various support and facilitate various areas of the project such as it digital asset management things of that nature. The primary team was the professor Dr. Anderson, the lead researcher we hired Tamron Williams and myself that met weekly and regularly to for about seven months, I think it was. All right, so getting into the timeline. This project was initially supposed to start in the fall early fall of 2022 there were a number of things that delayed it. Primarily that we had a hard time finding the right person for the hired position, and getting that person secured. So we had to wait for that person to finish their previous project. And once they did they joined the team. We did research late with the Utah State Archives, and that put us from about a two month delay immediately on upon start. So we had assembled the team the stakeholders like I said the Utah State Archives, they, they allowed us they were very gracious and allowed us to come in and look at anything they, and by us I mean the Tamron the lead researcher he was, we set it up and would travel to and from Logan to Salt Lake City which is about an hour and 20 minutes each way. And he would go there more twice a week probably to go to the research to research the archives and he would flag things that were going to be pulled for digitization since a number, most of them were not already digitized. And so, at that part, archival research, he's a historian we allowed him to sort of dive independently in that it's it's worth noting that our external partners were rather autonomous in nature. They gave us a lot of breath and rain to sort of do what we needed to do. That has its perks and cons as well. So I feel like the researcher that we're discussing he, he kind of had to do everything himself in a way in the beginning, he took on an enormous amount of responsibility and that definitely should be acknowledged. So while he was doing that I was working in partnering with the professor to plan and integrate it into the course curriculum. And right around when the course started we would sort of marry and match every week of the course to different things that we wanted to have done in the project which was a lot more difficult that I originally thought would be expected for both me, the prep and the professor we both, it was a new thing we had never really done that before so it was really interesting and kind of essential in terms of experimentation and seeing what works what doesn't work. So, also during that time, the class itself was researching about interstates and highways in general and then they were diving into the specific research for this project, knowing that they're working with a client and a public way. So, after that, they would select the materials that they wanted to work with and then started to form and fashion this exhibit narrative that they assisted in writing, and we would later flush out together as the main project team. Digitization was interesting. That also happened during the class around like March, April, because the state archives they were so gracious and letting us come in and digitize anything and they, they did that for free it was very kind of them. So, we had to have the researcher himself set up digitization and help out and facilitate that process so that that was something I had never done before I think it's been done before in my predecessors but it was new for me and that took a lot longer than I anticipated to so it was really great to have that sort of free access and ability, but it was definitely something that delayed our timeline. And then they got around May, June they got into the digital project processes but I won't dive too deep into that mainly file management metadata exhibit building in the platform which is omega by the way. And then performing quality control stakeholder review things of that nature, the initial funder for the position and the research, they were not as heavily involved they didn't want to. They wanted to maintain the integrity and the ethics of the research they didn't want to be involved in swing or influencing any of the content which I thought was great so they just sort of fact checked at the end made sure everything was up to par with what they know and believe from their end. And then so this project was according to the MOU was to be completed by June 30 end of the fiscal year. So that's a bit about the timeline. We had delays and delays and I think it's important to acknowledge sometimes that not everything goes according to plan sometimes you have to adjust and evolve and do what needs to be done, adapt to your situation to meet the best circumstances to meet the deliverable So we had to pivot many times and sort of delayed by the time we got to the digital project processes we were months behind but we were able to pull it together and come up with something really kind of new and interesting and the research was able to be facilitated and the product was able to be done on time so it all worked out but there's definitely things in reflection that I would have liked to have done differently particularly with the way we integrated into the class project. The way that the digitization went. I think I was a little bit loose on that we could have supported that process better. There was a number of things so getting to the learning outcomes. And again, I tailored these learning outcomes more from a project management standpoint less from the research the class perspective, and also from sort of. I wanted to be a conversation about the external partners that we work. So, some of my learning outcomes from a personal standpoint are allow extra time when piloting new types of projects or procedures and working with new stakeholders. While I had worked with Dr Anderson many times in the past and successfully. This was a totally new type of project it was an ambitious one and reflection it would have been. It would have been ideal to allow extra time and discuss that with the partners. Maybe we could have extended the final deadline and that would have allowed for a more seamless working timeline. Also, a second learning outcome is that we should expect and normalize failure to build the framework of success on for future projects. Sometimes I make a plan and I just wanted to go right by the plan but things happen, things you can't account for or expect and you have to filter them in and handle them to the best of your ability. And this project in particular. Things that a huge user failed but could have been done better were the digitization, we didn't expect how long that would take we didn't expect how the class would handle being able to write, I guess we assume the class would be handled would handle writing for this project. They were a little bit better they, they were a little confused at points. They didn't exactly understand the idea of writing for a public audience. That was something in retrospect I would have liked to done a little bit better, in terms of sort of guiding the class to the writing components. Also, we could have used. We could have used more people. And I think this is a really important part that we don't talk about a lot is maybe revisiting the terms of partnerships. Sometimes, you know, I know I get really excited about a project and it can't wait to start but sometimes certain projects require more resources, and I could have advocated for more people on this project to help support and facilitate it to the end deliverable. So that was something I thought was a huge component that I'm definitely going to learn for next time. And then finally, identify gaps in your existing processes or procedures and consult your professional network. There are, there isn't exactly like a blanket how to do all of these things instruction workbook anywhere. When it comes to class projects community work, it's all kind of. It's all individual and singular in its own way to when you're working on different research projects and different stakeholders and different resources with different resources so I think understanding that your procedures are a work in progress and they're evolving and projects happen to help us identify and address gaps where we might need to replace something or work or insert something that isn't currently available so in conclusion, the, the, the professor Dr. Anderson and I, she invited me to, to create a working group with her, and I am going to be offering the project management side of things it's for public historians that are integrating projects into their classes, and how it's essentially a call for a working group to create best practice, best practices and most sustainable public facing projects so I think it's really great that we're always continuing to work and evolve and use these sort of circumstances and improve upon them, and I hope that this helps you and it feels more relatable, and I'm available for any questions should you have any, have any, thank you. Great. Thank you Brittany, such an interesting project. All right, next up will be Molly. Just get my screen shared here. I don't see that okay. I hope so. Nobody's saying anything. Alright, you're good. Okay, so I am Molly Uber and I am the outreach coordinator for the Minnesota digital library. The Minnesota digital library is an aggregated collection of over 58,000 digitize historic archival materials from over 200 contributing organizations around the state of Minnesota. The majority of our contributors are libraries, archives, museums and historical societies but we work with other cultural heritage organizations and community groups as well. We have examples of many types of materials, primarily images, black and white photographs are biggest content area but we also have text booklets pamphlets letters maps AV and even some 3D items. So the Minnesota digital library started about 20 years ago, as a collective of around five large organizations in Minnesota, including the University of Minnesota where I'm based now. But from the very beginning, these kind of five big, big players reached out to smaller organizations around the state, and the purpose really was to provide a platform for organizations of all size to share their unique digitized archival materials. So, I have over 200 partners that I work with regularly, not all of them all the time, but they're all over the state they are of many sizes. The digital digital library, you can contribute anyone who is a nonprofit any nonprofit organization that has archival materials that they want to digitize in theory can participate in Minnesota digital library. So, and these various organizations have, you know, wide range as I mentioned of size of staff resources and and professionalism. So, so we have a process for working this through unlike some of my other presenters today I was kind of noticing as I was listening to Brittany and Danielle and know what Gabby's coming up. They're talking about individual projects and this is kind of, this is what I do all the time. So I have a process that I use over and over and over again. So, first how do we find all these contributors so as I mentioned the Minnesota digital library has been around for about 20 years so to a certain extent we are known quantity. People call me up or you know email me and say hey Molly I've got I've got a project I'm interested in digitizing what do you think we ended up talking it through and you know working out whether it is a good fit for MDL which what we call ourselves or not. I've also been told that MDL is a best kept secret, quote unquote, you know, way too many times to not work out actively reaching out for more contributors. So we have a robust social media presence. We have access to a statewide news platform that is mostly targeted at libraries but I can get information about MDL out over that. I also go to a lot of statewide conferences I make site visits I give presentations I table at events, you know all to raise awareness of MDL and what we do, and give people a face and a name of someone to talk to. I've actually not been with MDL since the beginning I've been here about nine years so I've joined it about maybe halfway through. I can inherit an existing process and about 100 contributors when I started, but I have refined the process and actively contributed to our actually added excuse me to our contributor base in the intervening years. So, we run on a fiscal year from July 1 to June 30 and our funding actually runs that way as well. So around this time every year I'm wrapping up my previous project year and about to launch a new one. So I'm working on that right now we just finished our phase 19. And as part of that every year we issue a call for proposals. So, as I mentioned in the previous slide this call is open to any nonprofit organization in the state. This is where and this is where we kind of communicate about ourselves a little about who we are a little bit about the process, and I lay out if we have any special content calls for the next project year. For example, for this one, I'm going to start seeking content related to the US semi-quincentennial, which is coming up in 2026. Similarly, some years ago we saw materials related to World War one in the mid 1920s excuse me so that we could be ready for the 100th anniversary of that conflict. More more commonly though we kind of just we also always accept general, general content that is in over about Minnesota, as we say, so that's the boundary we put on it. Once we've had some of those, we put out the call for proposals and I mentioned, sometimes in relation to that call which again I do try and publicize. Sometimes people know about the Minnesota digital library in our program. There's often an initial conversation between me and the potential contributor, kind of talking of as I said about what they have what they're interested in digitizing and how to approach the process. The next formal step is to fill out an application, which I've posted a copy of in my slide. The application that goes to a selection committee, I don't actually approve or not approve I'm just the, I'm the front person for these projects. It goes to a selection committee made up of historians librarians archivist educators, active and retired from all over Minnesota. When I started I mentioned I've refined the process of the application was over nine pages long and not very welcoming it was it was kind of hard to read there are a lot of barriers in it. I want to be in the business of helping people digitize things so I streamlined the application to be more shorter more approachable more plain language, and I reevaluated each year again around this time and advanced the new project year. So I don't want this application promise to be scary or onerous for people a lot of these organizations are very small sometimes one staff member, a lot of volunteers, you know, I don't want this to be a big hurdle for them. So and I have money to spend with how my funding works, and I need to spend it certain certain timelines, and I also really want to support a diversity of voices and content. So, once a project is approved by the selection committee, then I work with the contributor again I say congratulations your projects approved now this next step is an inventory form. So, as I mentioned earlier in the previous application that one of the reasons why it was a little more hard to fill out is that there was. You were expected to fill out a very detailed inventory of everything that you wanted to digitize with the project and I wanted to take that out of the first step I didn't want the contributor to have to make. And that kind of work before they even knew if their project was approved so now they just kind of give an overview of the content and give me a hard number of what they want to digitize its dimensions condition etc. A range of dimensions if need be. But once that project's approved then we really do need that specific information. So I need an itemized inventory with you know a local identifier object name dimensions conditions, all that stuff because that's how we can work with our digitization partners. I don't personally I just project managed the digitization part. We have one of two local centers, one here at the University of Minnesota, one at the Minnesota Historical Society that I work with and I contract with them to do all of our digitization, or if it's a format type they don't do we have a small, small handful of trusted vendors that we send things out to. And another part about my processes we don't give out any money at all this is not a grant we actually cover all the costs of that digitization. So that's another reason why we need to know very specifically in advance what the project contains that we can make sure we're budgeting it out properly. So, but again this is you know this is putting the inventory at this kind of secondary step that was again meant to remove barriers and increase participation and try and support the process and get moving along actually a little more smoothly. So if the digitization is completed at one of our centers as I mentioned then all the original materials go back to each contributor along with a. We used to do portable hard drives. Now it's everyone gets a jump drive with tips of everything they scan with us so they get their own tips and we can copy of the tips as well. They also get this metadata spreadsheet, which is filled out this is a blank example, and we have different spreadsheets for different format types. And it is filled out with all the administrative and technical metadata from the scanning process. And then we work with them on the descriptive metadata. So we kind of talk about that descriptive made metadata piece as they're in kind of contribution. Because as I mentioned, we take care of all the expenses of this which is very helpful to a number of our contributors, but you know we ask that then they kind of give something in return is sort of high phrase it. You know, it really, it makes more sense for them to do the metadata because they're the ones who are most knowledgeable about their stuff and we don't know what makes this particular photograph special or why it's historically significant. So it's really important that you know they share that knowledge with us but we've got a whole process we provide one on one metadata training we have a very detailed metadata handbook that is available via our website at any time if they want to check it out in advance. And we provide metadata support throughout the process. We are actually also experimenting. We're trying to pilot a program with try providing some more robust metadata support like maybe even coming in and and helping for a day or so like on site to assist with some of our contributors who due to staffing and resources kind of struggled to get that done. So we're trying to explore how to better support but we do have a good process in place that does work for most of our contributors. All right, so kind of some of the summaries and takeaways. This is this is a very hands on process. You know this is my primary responsibility so I do other things but most of what I do is generate projects and get projects moving through for MDL and I do anywhere between, you know, 15 to 30 projects generally in a year. So we used to use. There's a lot of personal communication involved a lot of, a lot of emailing a lot of phone calls a lot of, a lot of checking in. We used to use base camp for project tracking. And then we tried a custom module in our city CRM system. We, the university let go of their base camp subscription so we had to move and then the city CRM just was really kind of clunky. So recently, we've created a more of a Google Doc tracking system that mirrored many of our base camp fields and that seems to be working pretty well. We also used to track things on whiteboards but you know it's pretty much all digital now especially the pandemic put down I think the last of the whiteboards that we use for tracking. We used to have physical files and still do for all of our projects up to about phase 13. But then since all the applications were coming in digitally, we now store all of our project files digitally in teamwork and started and we went back retroactively we did have a number of digital files going back to phase five so it's pretty well represented in teamwork. And one of the reasons, there's many reasons why we work with organizations rather than individuals, but one of them is to help ensure that there'll be someone there to communicate with if we need to in the future. Because even organizations have lots of turnover, and it's good to have you know staff, staff comes and goes and even in my nine years here I've seen a lot of people change at some of these places we work with. We work with all contributors at all times as I mentioned I'm usually working with somewhere between, yeah maybe an average of 20 at any given time. But there are times when I need to communicate with all of them, for example, like when Google changed their analytics format recently I had to communicate out to all of our contributors who were receiving Google analytics reports about their collections about that change so I need to contact information for everyone so that's why I keep that spreadsheet of people and update it regularly. So because that can be kind of a challenge to keep those communications open. So really, you know, working with that many people all the time. It's all it's all about the relationships you know it's about being there, being approachable keep your communications open show up. I'm going to be traveling to northern Minnesota, which is, I'm traveling almost six hours by car to go visit some of our contributors up there who, you know I don't want to make them come down to this, the major cities all the time it's really important to go where people are. I think it's really important to have that clear well articulated process, you know, one of the first things when people approached me on a project I'm like okay well here's here's what to expect we've got the application you know I run through the steps, similar to what I did. And here, we have a number of policies are all available they're clearly written they're on our website. You know our take down policy are you know project policies all the policies so those are there to have people have questions about what's going on or why decision was made. And then kind of that tracking process and that's something I've been really working on refining the last year or so as, you know, city CRM wasn't working we're all in the pandemic, you know a lot of the things that have been a little more casual are now more codified and and in these documents and tracking systems and I think things are going forward well so that is it. Anyone's welcome to contact me or ask me questions and thank you so much for your time today. Thank you Molly. All right, and last but certainly not least, we'll have Gabby. Can everyone see my screen. We can. Can you hear me. We can. Fantastic. Great. Okay. So, as Crystal said, I am Gabby Gabriella Williams, I am the digital projects librarian at the University of Miami. And I guess I thought I would start with just a very brief overview of Pan Am's corporate history, just because I know that not all of us are quite old enough to remember what I'm going to be talking about today. So, without further ado. From the time of its inception in 1927 Pan American World Airways was America's preeminent and for a long time only international airline, establishing air routes throughout the world and achieving many aviation records, including the first airline across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In fact, they were the closest to a nationalized airline the US has ever had and played a key role in World War Two and other military operations. The company and most especially as founder, one trip was a perennial innovator, often implementing new aircraft and technology along before its competitors. Pan Am was well known for its luxury and frills, something that is quite evident in their marketing and advertisements, and the culture and impact of Pan Am can still be felt today. At the time of its bankruptcy, the Pan American Pan Am archive contained over 85,000 boxes of material. They were very fastidious in archiving their nearly seven decade history. After Pan Am dissolved in 1991 at the University of Miami special collections received all the photographic paper and audio visual records, which presently comprised nearly 1500 linear feet. Subsequently, History Miami Museum and the Smithsonian received the cultural and 3D artifacts. Other institutions like Duke University had already acquired Pan Am's marketing materials through their acquisition of advertising accounts in support of their degree programs. And through these acquisitions, all of our institutions had been experiencing some of the same organizational preservation and discoverability issues that UM had. So there was ample opportunity for us to collaborate and partner with them on future projects. But for any of that to happen, we had to do a considerable amount of groundwork to achieve a digital transformation of the collection. So I'm going to give you a super brief overview of what led the University of Miami to be able to collaborate with our partners. So UM has actually received two digitization grants for Pan Am. Our first digitization project began in 2017 with a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, or NHPRC. This project built on a previous processing grant that UM was awarded also from NHPRC to enhance access and use. And although the processing grant made the physical collection more user friendly, the collection still wasn't accessible online. So digitization was our obvious next step. And NHPRC grant was an 18 month project with UM acting on our own to digitize the printed materials series, which is the most used series among Pan Am's 19 subject groupings in the collection. A total of 60 boxes of material were digitized through outsourcing as well as 10 boxes scanned in-house, totaling over 114,000 images. All of the digitized material was then harvested into DPLA to broaden access. And this is really where we gained momentum for our next grant project and how we lay the groundwork for our future endeavors. So upon completion, successful completion of the NHPRC grant, we had already done so much work on our own that we knew we wanted to supplement UM's digital collection with materials that we knew we didn't have in our own. History Miami Museum became a national choice since they were local and had the cultural artifacts and the 3D objects and because we had referred patrons to them frequently for research purposes. We also sought out Duke University because we felt their Pan Am advertisement holdings really complimented the materials we had already digitized. And since we had already worked with DPLA to harvest our existing Pan Am digital collection from the previous grant, we used that as a catalyst to jumpstart our grant proposal and continue our work with them. So the four of us institutions together then obtained a digitizing hidden collections grant from CLEAR. And so for this project, UM digitized 69 boxes of Pan Am records, which we outsourced to backstage library works. History Miami Museum contributed over 500 artifacts, which UM photographed for them. Additionally, Duke contributed over 6600 advertisements that they also digitized through their outsourcing. And finally, bringing all three collections together, we then created a commercial aviation themed research portal in DPLA, along with the digital exhibit primary source set and a classroom teaching guide for educators. Fortunately, we will not have time today to take a dive into the particulars of the DPLA portal, but I'm going to drop the link in the chat later so that you all can check it out at your leisure. But before I get into the grant project itself, I'd like to give you a better background about History Miami Museum. Normally I would provide a better background on Duke and their related assets as well. But in the interest of time, and I think today's focus is more on partnerships with cultural heritage institutions. So I think we'll just gloss over that. So History Miami Museum or HMM is a Smithsonian affiliate located in downtown Miami, Florida. They were founded as an association in 1940 and have been operating as a museum since 1962. HMM is the largest regional history museum in South Florida, and their archives and research center comprises over 1 million historical images. The museum houses over 37,000 3D artifacts that help tell the stories of Miami's communities, individuals, places and events. HMM also maintains an aviation sub collection that includes over 1500 items comprised of artifacts from Pan American World Airways as well as Eastern Airlines and National Airlines. Museum's Pan Am collection was donated to them by the Pan American Historical Foundation and contains over 800 cataloged objects. Currently HMM has three Pan Am and or aviation themed exhibitions, including one that is on display at Miami International Airport and the J terminal, which you can kind of see here. One of the biggest challenges for you with the new grant was that we handled all the photography of the 545 artifacts that were captured for History Miami, which until many trips downtown to the museum, and logging all of our equipment there, since their items could not be shipped or transferred to us. HMM's Pan Am collection includes a wide variety of artifacts, some of which are very small like lapel pens to the very large like wand trips desk. And since our technicians were also handling the in-house scanning of oversized and refragile materials that could not be done by our vendor. In addition to their regular non-grant related scanning duties, our staff was stretched pretty thin. And this was especially true once the project stretched into the pandemic. This was supposed to be a two-year grant and it ended up being a three-year project. But I think we did a fabulous job managing it overall under the circumstances. So while UN was busy with prepping and outsourcing of our materials, we also coordinated with History Miami Museum to begin a selection and capture of all the objects they contributed to the project. Dr. Drew Wilford, an aviation historian who actually had been working for UN, but also happened to volunteer for the museum as a docent, chose the items out of 800 total cataloged items. Drew selected the items based on potential historical significance and uniqueness, and these included a wide array of things such as uniforms, dinnerware and silverware, model airplanes, luggage, jewelry and pins and so much more. Drew also went to great lengths to provide detailed descriptions of each of the items. However, our bigger challenge was integrating the museum's metadata into the library system. Even though HMM owns most of the cultural artifacts that supplement the Pan Am collection, they don't have the capacity or the funding to be able to build or host a digital collection on their own. So UM however does have that capacity and so we agreed to host their digital collection for them. So this presented several hurdles in terms of crosswalking and converting their associated metadata and enriching it to comply with library standards. So in many cases we discovered that items frequently had insufficient metadata, at least for library purposes to begin with so Drew's contributions were quite useful, as we oftentimes simply just did not know what a particular item even was at times. Additionally, many objects such as this toiletries kit here were multi piece items, which added an additional layer of complexity with regard to item capture and description. Since the museum had accession a session multi piece items individually, but we preferred to ingest them as one digital asset. The good news is that once the metadata was properly enriched and just to the repository was quite easy. With 545 objects that we captured yielded just shy of 1200 images. The new collection was of course also harvested to DPLA alongside UM's other digitized Pan Am material. On that note, I would love to do discuss the next phase of the grant project, but I just don't think we have time for that today. I'll give you the link for the portal, and it's super simple. It's just aviation.dpa.dp.la I need to where is the chat. There you are. And yeah, I hope that you will take a look at it. And I'm also going to give you a link to history Miami Museum's collection that we are hosting for them. And yeah, take a look at that as well. There's tons of links to all of our other pan am related things that we've done and I hope that you enjoy there's, there's been a lot of things. And also takeaways really quick before I forget some departing thoughts. I wanted to leave you with some takeaways from our project. First, that this really should go without saying but prepare for the unexpected. Unfortunately our project landed right in the middle of the pandemic as I said, as I'm sure a lot of happened to many of you guys. But with grant funded projects, it's really essential to be mindful of your overall project timeline. Even relatively minor things like staff departures which we did experience with this project can affect your productivity. And unfortunately, I don't even have time to talk about, you know, we are vendor actually had a data breach. And so that, you know, posed a problem in the long run to so there's, there's a lot of hurdles that you have to be mindful of that you might not, you know, might not anticipate. Consider how you're going to crosswalk your metadata. As mentioned before museums and other cultural heritage institutions organized information very differently than libraries do, especially academic libraries. And sometimes that starts with the item capture itself. For example, we were always including our color wheel and ruler and a lot of our asset capture and that occasionally affected determinations that were made during item and metadata enrichment. And, you know, if you're working with an external partner, how will you access the materials you're digitizing? Will you be traveling there? Will they come to you? Can they ship the materials? If you do have to go there, how will you get, you know, how will you get your equipment there and what computers will you use? We actually had to put into our grant proposal. We had to request a computer or a laptop computer specifically for this project. The logistics really pile up in a hurry. And lastly, don't let any of these hurdles scare you. All three of our institutions have been extremely pleased with the final outcome of our projects. Each of our individual collections is definitely more accessible and discoverable and provides opportunities for more meaningful research. But I think more importantly, our collections, now that they've been joined together have been deeply contextualized in a way that wasn't possible before. I really am leaving a lot of, a lot of lessons learned along the way, but I will stop there for now. And I hope you guys will check out our collections and I'm here to answer questions if you need. Thanks for listening. Thank you to all of the presenters today. It was so interesting to hear about everything. I do know we've gone a little long, but we'll go ahead and