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Current users describe their experiences using CONTENTdm at the ALA annual conference 2007 in Washington DC

CONTENTdm sessions at the ALA annual conference featured a short overview of CONTENTdm, and two current users described their experiences using CONTENTdm to create a digital library.

Gulf Coast Community College’s Memory Project

Matt Burrell and his team at Gulf Coast Community College had virtually no archival/digitization experience, but with a little bit of education, a lot of hard work, and the help of CONTENTdm, they produced an impressive collection to commemorate the college’s 50th anniversary.

Matt Burrell presented the GCCC experience in building a multi-media collection with limited resources and a tight timeframe. He included self-proclaimed false starts as well as lessons learned and specific steps taken for successful completion. The result is a true community collection. Matt described a particular end user experience where the daughter of a graduate was able to view her father’s time at GCCC through a picture of the basketball team, an article in the student newspaper, yearbook images, and commencement ephemera. As Matt stated, "Members of the community view the collection as bringing people together with one similar background: education". Future plans include adding additional images and books as well as harvesting to WorldCat for greater global discovery.

University of Louisville Digital Collections

As the new Digital Initiatives Librarian, Rachel Howard was responsible for consolidating online access to the digitized archives at the University of Louisville. So she turned to other members of the CONTENTdm user community to help her library get most out of their investment.

Rachel Howard detailed the process leading up to the May 1 launch of their first two digital collections. The presentation included detailed information about collection set-up, project planning, and workflow decisions—all of which can be useful to other collection builders. The current collections include a postcard collection representing nearly a century in the life of an extended Kentucky family and the Jean Thomas Traipsin’ Woman Collection with images documenting musical instruments, crafts, and scenes with community and family groups, primarily in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. As in the case of GCCC, the collections were very well-received and measurements showed approximately 150,000 “hits” during the month of May.

The Digital Collections are continually growing: works in progress include oral history interviews from the 1970s dealing with the experiences of the African American community in Louisville; a set of illuminated manuscript leaves; and early maps, legal documents, and photographs relating to Louisville and Kentucky.