Twitter and Archives

At our department in Alden Libraries at Ohio University, we have many different collections of images and manuscripts. Some include the E. W. Scripps collection of images and Scripps' manuscripts, the Ohio University Yearbook collection, and other images from Ohio University's long and rich history. After reading the 23 Things article on twitter and micro-blogging (thing 8), I realized that we could actually seriously use micro-blogging to promote our work and other archival collections contained in Alden Library.

This idea isn't new. Previously, when I first started working here at Digital Initiatives, we scanned a diary of a student who came here in the 1800's (the exact time of that student's enrollment escaped me at the moment). My co-worker had the idea of starting a twitter feed of his diary updates, in line with the actual date of his diary entries. The reason we didn't do it, besides being busy with our other important tasks, was that the diary entries didn't cover a full year, and the selection that we were digitizing was only a small 1-2 month slection of his diary.

My proposal is this, instead of just doing diary-type posts, we could do twitter posts that promote individual collections. Along with the small amount of text, we could include the most interesting photo's available in the collection (in the hopes that students and others will go online and visit our other digitized collections). A congruent idea I had was time-related, as we probably should only post/promote one collection per week, along with only posting once a day. This will ensure quality posts along with not annoying those who follow us with constant twitter-feed activity. Also here is another picture from our Scripps collection:

Image Generators and Archival Images

Thing 13 on the 23 Things for Archivists talks about image generators and image editors online, such as Big Huge Labs and Image Chef. While these websites seem a bit campy, especially Image Chef, they actually may be helpful in promoting the different image collections that we hold at the Digital Initiatives Unit here at Ohio University. The website Big Huge Labs has some neat, easy to use photo editing tools, which we could use to generate some fun and cool looking versions of images in our collections. For example, when we want to promote our E. W. Scripps collection, we could use a pop art version of this classic photo of E.W.S. These edited images should increase traffic to our collection's website, and these edited photos from image generator websites hopefully renew interest in our archive and other collections that Alden library has to offer.

Possibilities with Facebook

Well, it has been a moment since I have posted anything substantial. This summer was spent learning more about the procedures and processes of how archiving and digitization of media really works. I also have explored more ways to get archival materials out to the public and thought about how to attract people to find out more about Digital Initiatives at Ohio University. One of the first ways should be through Facebook.

Noting the 23 Things for Archivists article on Social Networking (or thing 6), I have read through a few examples of archives on Facebook, specifically the Coca-Cola Archives, the YMCA Archives, and the Moving Image Archive (All of which are on Facebook). A thought of mine is to create a Digital Initiatives Facebook page. This page would have Possible pictures of staff and/or a map of where our office is located. It could list the proper contacts to the library reference desks, the archives, and to other needed library personnel. The key to posting is to find very interesting photos, ideally our own scanned images, and post them, while including a link to our collections online. For example, we could post a photo of a cover of a yearbook, example of photo, and then we would insert a link to the collections in the same post as the photo.

I believe this may be a fairly good way to engage the public with what we are producing, but more importantly, it could attract a lot of students, and it could get them more interested in DI and the Archives in general. The possible Facebook account will also allow us to connect to other archives, which in this day and age is never a bad thing.