Save your spot for this workshop taught by staff from MCLS, MSU, and WMU:

Creating and Caring for Digital Collections

6-day class, February 1-2, 8-9, 15-16, 10am-12pm Eastern (9-11am Central)

Qualifies for 6 SCECHs for Michigan school library staff!

This workshop was offered one year ago but is now in an expanded format. Details follow:

Libraries have long collected and preserved unique local history collections that tell stories about the places we live and work. But how do we start to bring these valuable collections into the 21^st century? This course will provide an overview of basic considerations for starting a digital collections project, with a special focus on resources and strategies for small or under-resourced institutions. Topics include project preparation and readiness, defining scope, assessment and selection, basic digitization, metadata standards and requirements, rights statements, providing access, digital preservation, and using digital collections in organizational advocacy. 

Participants will emerge with a clear sense of:

• the knowledge and skills required for a digital collections project
• how to create a plan for a successful project
• how to build a diverse team of stakeholders in your organization and beyond
• types of internal policies that can support digital collections work
• how to describe digital collections to make them easier for the public to find and access
• how to keep digital collections secure, accessible, and usable for the long-term future
• different grant opportunities available for digitization and preservation
• why creating and caring digital collections is a valuable service to the many publics we serve

Attendees planning on submitting applications for the Library of Michigan LSTA Improving Access to Information Grants, Indiana State Library LSTA Indiana Memory Digitization Grants, and other digitization funding opportunities will find this class particularly useful.

NEW THIS YEAR! Participants will have expanded opportunities to put strategies and tools introduced in instructors' presentations into practice with many hands-on activities. For this reason, we encourage (but don’t require) participants to have identified a collection or object they would like digitized in the future. To help select an object or collection, we recommend participants review “The Five As: A Digitization Decision Guide,” created by Biz Gallo, Statewide Digitization initiatives Coordinator at the Library of Michigan.

For this and other great workshops please visit our Training Store here https://store.mcls.org

To learn about our Essential Workplace Skills and Cataloging Certificate program, click here https://www.mcls.org/training-events/certification/

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Gwen Haviland, Training Department

Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS)

1407 Rensen St, Suite 1, Lansing, MI 48910

(517) 220-9950

training@mcls.org