1. Erin Passehl CIMA Spring Conference May 15, 2009
Beyond the Blue: Creating Digital Collections at Boise State University
Erin Passehl
CIMA Spring Conference
May 15, 2009
Erin Passehl, Librarian/Archivist and Assistant Professor at Boise State University Special Collections
From Midwest, degrees and experience, took this position in July 2008

2. Where we are today
Digital Collections website went live at end of February 2009
Four collections chosen
Historic Boise State (973 items)
Western Writers Series Digital Editions (23 items)
Len Jordan (75 items)
Bethine Church (58 items)
1,205 individual items
Customized pages (scripted method)
CONTENTdm Featured Collection, May 2009
Preparation to go live included making “splash” pages for each collection, including title page, about page, and search page.
Scripted method vs. duplication method

3. Where we started
Kinesiology 101 final research projects using University Archives
Purchased CONTENTdm license in 2007
Purchased MicroTek ScanMaker 10000XL scanner and start strategically scanning materials using best practices from BCR
Kinesiology classes began incorporating Special Collections materials into final term projects on the history of physical education and athletics at Boise State University…
License: Boise State alone vs. Idaho consortium
Strategic scanning

4. In the meantime… New faculty archivist position began August 2008
Created small “exhibit” in August
Introduction of Custom Queries and Results (CQR) brings additional workload
Historic Boise State search page
Exhibit = Broncos Are Dancing!
Historic Boise State: Want to add people, buildings, sports for Kinesiology students to use digital collections with more ease but those fields were not originally in the metadata. New archivist creates more work.

5. Working with a small staff
Divide work amongst 2 archivists, 1 staff, a few undergraduate students, and 1 intern per semester
Make effective use of interns
Quality control
Patience!
Takes time to plan out project, involves actively looking at collection in question to anticipate problems, preservation/conservation issues, etc.
Supervising interns always takes longer than you plan; exponentially more time at beginning and end of project
Make the project as simple as possible

6. Other good things to come from digital collections
Donor outreach: use digital collections as showcase pieces to attract and target specific donors, people, or organizations
Prove our importance to the library, university through user statistics collected via Google Analytics
Hits on digital collections website already outpaces those on the regular Special Collections website 2:1 after only 3 months.

7. Real Life Snafus Exhibits vs. collections (language barriers)
Old online exhibits
Rule by committee
Watch out for those cords!
Check your back-ups
“Can you make a tribute for…”
(WWS, Memorandum Of Understanding, web page, brochure)
(back-up files vs. file corruption)

8. Where we are headed Flickr Commons? Promotional videos?
Oregon State University (using CONTENTdm)
Promotional videos?
Clara Spiegel Collection
New collections on the horizon: “best of” vs. entire collections?
Flickr may introduce our collections to more people via the internet; our stats showed less than 15% of inquiries returning from Google or search engine in general; how can we bump this number up? Flickr Commons may be the answer…
Video of English graduate student, plan to make more this summer
Digital collections that mimic our physical holdings vs. creating thematic collections that intellectually pulls from multiple physical collections.

9. Resources Digital Resources Guide (Boise State University LibGuide)
BCR Digital Imaging Best Practices
CONTENTdm
Flickr and Flickr Commons