[SOA] A New NEDCC Story - Creating the P. T. Barnum Digital Collection

[Julie Martin]

A New NEDCC Story:   
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People often think that to create a digital collection and make it accessible online, you just scan your materials and upload the files to a website, right?    

Well, we are about to tell you how that is NOT the case, and to describe the many steps involved in such an initiative - from planning to grant writing to staffing to collaboration to prioritization to conservation to outsourcing to development of finding aids to ingest to . . .     

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'WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT:'   
Creating the P. T. Barnum Digital Collection - Supported by Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities   
 
In June 2010, the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut was hit by an EF-1 tornado. The building sustained major damage and the collections sustained varying degrees of damage as well. The Museum is the last surviving building attributed to the American visionary entrepreneur and showman, Phineas T. Barnum, who was no stranger to disaster himself, having lost two museum buildings as well as his home to catastrophic fires.     

As the staff members were dealing with the aftermath of the storm damage, it became evident that there was a great deal of demand for access to the materials, and that the research value of the collection was far-reaching.    

Learn how this catastrophe eventually spurred the Barnum Museum to create the "P. T. Barnum Digital Collection," in collaboration with the University of Connecticut's Connecticut Digital Archive.    
 
READ THE NEDCC STORY HERE: https://www.nedcc.org/about/nedcc-stories/barnum-museum-digitization   

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NEDCC | Northeast Document Conservation Center   
www.nedcc.org    
Join us at Digital Directions Atlanta, Oct 15-16. Deadline is Oct 6!    
Learn more: http://bit.ly/DD18abt      

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