Digital Initiative - About the Digital Initiative

About the initiative

Since 2002 the Initiative has collaborated to build digital collections of scholarly and general interest with other partners from across campus, the state of Wyoming, and the region. The Initiative is a member of the Collaborative Digitization Program and is a member of several CDP working groups to establish best practices and projects, including Western Trails, the Rocky Mountain Online Archive (RMOA), and Sound Model. Other Initiative projects include establishing the Wyoming Memory Portal, a gateway to Wyoming’s primary resources; and a collaborative digitization project with the Rocky Mountain Herbarium.

Materials on the UW digital initiative

The University of Wyoming has provided national leadership in the area of digitization, particularly in the development of standards to ensure that digital material can be retrieved, accessed, and preserved over decades. These new digital collections will benefit UW students and researchers by increasing their level of access to the UW Libraries and AHC's collection materials, while allowing their reference staffs to provide a higher level of efficient reference assistance.

Materials you will find among the digitized collections include historic maps, photographs, printed ephemera, sound and video files, and more. Some highlighted collections include:

Undergraduate Research Day

The University of Wyoming and Wyoming’s community colleges provide many opportunities for undergraduates to participate in independent research projects across many disciplines. The purpose of Undergraduate Research Day is to recognize and to celebrate the accomplishments of undergraduate student researchers. Each year, this event continues to display the richness of their curiosity and creativity. The topics will include research in the areas of agriculture, business, education, engineering, health sciences, biological and physical sciences, mathematical sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities.

Undergraduate students were invited to participate in the Ninth Annual Wyoming Undergraduate Research Day which took place on the University of Wyoming campus, Saturday, April 26, 2008. Wyoming´s celebration of undergraduate research was open to all students who have completed an independent research or creative project in any discipline at Wyoming community colleges, UW/Casper College and the University of Wyoming. Abstracts of all presentations were published, and the day concluded with a dinner honoring the presenters and their families.

Undergraduate Research Day, 2008

Undergraduate Research Day, 2007

McNair Scholars Program

The McNair Scholars Program at the University of Wyoming prepares undergraduate students from groups traditionally underrepresented in graduate education for success in doctoral degree programs.

One of the eight Federal TRIO Programs, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program (its formal name) encourages participants to enroll in graduate programs and then tracks their progress through to the successful completion of advanced degrees. The goal is to increase the attainment of Ph.D. Degrees by students from underrepresented segments of society.

Eligibility:

Participants must be students from limited income families and be the first generation to complete a baccalaureate degree OR
Be a member of an ethnic group that includes Hispanics, Native Americans, or African American individuals
Students must have at least 60 credit hours with a minimum cumulative GPS of 3.0
Scholars must have a strong desire to earn a Ph.D.

These student research papers have been collected from past presentations, recognizing their scholarship and achievement at the University of Wyoming.

Western Trails

1000 items completed as part of a multi-state collaborative featuring maps, photographs, artwork, video, and a 1911 thesis on trails through Wyoming.

Charles J. Belden

Images from the 1920s and 1930s of Belden’s Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse, Wyoming. The images include depictions of everyday life on the ranch, raising antelope, dude ranching, and Belden’s family members.

Western Trails

1000 items completed as part of a multi-state collaborative featuring maps, photographs, artwork, video, and a 1911 thesis on trails through Wyoming.

Charles J. Belden

Richard Throssel

Images from Throssel’s photographic work from 1902-1933 mostly of daily life, ceremonies, portraits and village scenes of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indians.

James Bertenshaw

Letters written between Bertenshaw and his wife Mary while James traveled from Indiana to the Montana goldfields in 1864-1865.

J.S. Palen

A veterinarian from Cheyenne, Wyoming, Palen collected Cheyenne Frontier Days and other rodeo materials. Collection features photographs and postcards of parades, rodeos, and ranching.

General Collections

This collection features the images most requested by AHC patrons for duplication in a wide array of topics.

Rocky Mountain Herbarium

Images of specimen samples from the largest collection of Rocky Mountain plants and fungi in existence.

Roscoe Turner

Images from Roscoe Turner (September 29, 1895 – June 23, 1970) was an aviator who was a three time winner of the Thompson Trophy.

Heart Mountain Relocation Center

Images from the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. The center was one of ten camps mandated by the War Department in 1942 to detain Americans of Japanese ancestry. It was located between Cody and Powell, Wyoming. The first internees arrived in August 1942. The camp closed in November 1945.

Moreton Frewen

Contains letters relating to Frewen’s ranching interests in northeastern Wyoming during the 1880's, including the Powder River Cattle Company, Ltd. Many of the letters are to his wife Clara Jerome Frewen, and his brother Richard and others regarding business operations.

Seymour Bernfeld

Images taken by Bernfeld, a U.S. Department of the Interior Agent, of towns, historic landmarks, national parks, reservoirs, dams, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and ranches during personal trips around Wyoming in the 1930s.

Water Resources

Letters between Cody, Wyoming businessman George T. Beck and Buffalo Bill Cody regarding the founding of Cody, Wyoming, and the construction of the Cody Canal in the 1890s.

John and Frances Casement

Letters between John, who directed the track laying of the transcontinental railroad from 1866-1869, and his wife Frances, who stayed behind in Ohio.

Black 14

Contains materials regarding the dismissal of 14 black players from the University of Wyoming’s football team in October 1969. The players wanted to wear black armbands to protest the alleged racial policies of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which operates Brigham Young University. The day before the game with BYU, the players met with coach Lloyd Eaton regarding the armbands and Eaton dismissed them from the team for violating team rules.

Audio

Digitized audio recordsings from AHC collections, most proiminently tapes of musical performances and interviews with members of the Arapaho tribe concerning their language and culture by sociologist Zdeněk Salzmann. Other collections include interviews with people associated with the recovery of a 1955 United Air Lines crash in the mountains west of Laramie; audio tapes of a program describing the early history of Laramie, told by Clarice Whittenburg, a UW elementary education professor; speeches by architect Victor Gruen and Departmet of the Interior Cheif Floyd Dominy on water resources; oral history interviews with Wyoming pioneers; and kinterviews with UW graduate and former Department of the Interior Secretary James Watt.

The digitization process:

Collection Building & Technology

Scanning operator Justin White performing scanning and a visual quality check.

Building a digital collection involves selection of materials, clearance of copyright issues, scanning, the creation of data about the digital item (called metadata), data storage, delivery of the images to the user, and ensuring that the digital objects can be sustained long-term. The digital objects created by the University Libraries and the AHC are in accordance with national best practices, which it helped to create in partnership with the Collaborative Digitization Program in its best practices documents for digital imaging, metadata, and digital audio.

Scanning operator performing scanning and a visual quality check.

Faculty and staff from the Digital Initiative have selected materials for digitization they feel best represents the quality, diversity and breadth of the AHC and UW Libraries’ collections. Submissions are evaluated within the context of available staffing, resources, and technology.

For more information, see the AHC’s digitization documentation (pdf).

Contact us

For more information about the University of Wyoming Digital Initiatives Programs, please contact Stephen Boss at sboss@uwyo.edu.

Digital Initiative - making collections available online