Virtual Archives for Scholarship and Training: Creating and Collaborating in Digital Spaces

Abstract

This article is a case study of a collaboration between a small museum and a university, with the goal of digitizing a portion of the museum’s archival collection and using that material for a hands-on archival organization experience in the education of fully online public history graduate students. The project utilized a legal document scanning firm to provide cost-certainty, timely scanning, and to sidestep challenges posed by the need to acquire expensive equipment and conduct specialized training. Online students generated item-level metadata to organize a portion of the collection. The project was funded by a small internal university seed grant, and the museum remained in control of the ultimate disposition of the digital collection. In the end, the museum and its publics will benefit from having these sources digitally available. The case study concludes with a number of “lessons learned” that might be valuable for future efforts, both for the project’s original participants and for others who might want to try such collaborations.