Recollection Wisconsin

Current and Recent Projects

In the fall of 2024, Recollection Wisconsin launched the Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative, an internship program places graduate students with Wisconsin organizations to digitize local history collections. The graduate students, trained and mentored by Recollection Wisconsin staff, complete the work and receive a stipend from Recollection Wisconsin and the newly-created collections are added to Recollection Wisconsin. It’s a win-win!

In 2024, Recollection Wisconsin governance members formed two working groups, the Foundations Working Group and the Metadata Working Group. The Foundations Working Group, in conjunction with the Recollection Wisconsin Governing Board and Steering Committee, articulated a mission, vision, and set of values to guide the work of Recollection Wisconsin going forward. The Metadata Working Group is in the process of creating and updating existing Recollection Wisconsin documentation with guidance on best practices for creating metadata that is accessible and descriptive.

Recollection Wisconsin has enhanced and expanded its Digital Readiness Toolkit to incorporate guidance and best practices on digitizing and sharing audiovisual content. These enhancements, a result of valuable contributions from the Community Archiving Workshop, include a comprehensive digital readiness self-assessment tool for your organization, a framework for prioritizing A/V materials for digitization, and in-depth guidance tailored specifically to managing audiovisual collections. We’ve also updated and expanded the Digital Project Planning Worksheet, added support for choosing a Collection Management System and recommendations for digitization equipment, and incorporated requests for resources and information that practitioners have requested. Additionally, the Toolkit is now available via print-on-demand!

Recollection Wisconsin, in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, can loan a Film Inspection Kit for examining 8mm or 16mm film, a Wolverine Film Scanner for reformatting 8mm and Super8 film, and an audio cassette digitization kit for digitizing audio cassette tapes. Funding for the kits was provided by a grant to AMIA from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Kits are available to lend to any organization within the state of Wisconsin that is either 1) an affiliate of the Wisconsin Historical Society; 2) a WiLS general member; or 3) a Recollection Wisconsin content partner. The kits are free to borrow for up to two months, or longer if another organization has not requested to borrow the kit. Read more or fill out an interest form.