LIPA Digital Project Registry: New and Improved

In 2015 LIPA’s digital preservation registry was first published on the web. Updates have arrived! A newly launched Digital Projects Registry is now live. The registry is a compilation of digital collections created by LIPA member institutions containing a wide variety of legal materials ranging from personal papers to civil codes.

The updated Registry now allows for easier navigation to the various collections in the Registry and includes an image related to the collections. The use of Google Forms has also allowed for a cleaner Project Input Form. Though not all fields are required, there is an opportunity to provide logistical and technological details that can better serve other libraries who may be seeking to start their own digital projects. Form questions ask for information such as the software and digitization equipment that are used in the project or whether your digitization project was outsourced. A PDF of prior submissions remains available as well.

If you or your institution are considering a digitization project, please consider applying for a LIPA Project Grant or a Conference Grant. All LIPA member institutions and all individuals employed by a LIPA member institution are eligible to apply. Applications must be submitted by June 1, 2022 for the project grant. For further information on these grant opportunities and to apply, please view the Grant Opportunities tab of the LIPA website.

For further information on the newly updated Digital Projects Registry, please contact Michelle Trumbo at lipa.trumbo@gmail.com.

Before you know it, you will receive the response below too!! Best of luck on your digital projects and please don't hesitate to let us know about them!!

Looking Forward to Preservation Week 2022 and LIA

Last year LIPA highlighted a number of preservation webinars to help celebrate and facilitate preservation within your communities. At the most recent LIPA Board meeting, we took time to discuss our intention to host a one-day virtual event during 2022 Preservation Week (April 24 - 30). Although ALA has yet to announce its 2022 theme, we considered a number of topics to discuss during our virtual event including trends in law libraries’ preservation goals and the awareness that libraries and the individuals working within them perform best when everyone works together, regardless of job function.

Collaboration is essential to one of the projects I am working on now: to collect the James E. Rogers College of Law born-digital media files and bring them under the Cracchiolo Law Library umbrella for both preservation and access. This project includes working with the Roger’s College Information Technology Department with support from both my immediate supervisor and my library director.

When born-digital media was first produced at the Rogers College, it was captured and managed by the college’s IT Department using the video platform Mediasite. Then a need for migration came and material was transferred to Panopto. Following the transfer, born-digital media has lived in Panopto since. Today, the majority of the born-digital media produced by the college is being captured via Zoom and uploaded to YouTube. With an access assist from IT, I have collected the digital material that is living on Panopto and now the YouTube material awaits.

To actively preserve the digital media discussed above and provide access to it, my law library is strongly considering joining the Legal Information Archive. At its core, this consortium of like minded law libraries is interested in preserving “print and electronic legal material.” However, given the continuously evolving application that is Preservica, consortium members are also actively preserving and providing access to “institutional content, born-digital material, and much more.”

There are currently two LIA subscription options for the year 2022. An institutional level subscription includes full involvement in LIA, including a designated collection for your library and participation in the project’s steering meetings, with a $1,500 annual fee. The collection level subscription includes up to 1 GB of content per collection (additional data or discrete collections can be purchased) which is ingested by LIPA and housed in LIPA’s general collection at a one-time price of $2,000. For additional information or to request a demo, contact Michelle Trumbo at lipa.trumbo@gmail.com.

Use Google Slides to Exhibit Archival Material

The archival material in your collections can deliver wonder visually. If you work with archives and special collections, exhibition is one of the best ways for you to market and provide access to those items. If exhibition isn’t something you are doing in your law library, let us know what’s keeping you from doing so in the comments. Perhaps you are a lone arranger and don’t have the time. Maybe you lack the required tools. Or maybe you are limiting yourself to the idea that an exhibit must be a physical one.

Physical exhibition had long been a primary promotional tool for Archives and Special Collections at the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library. The move to remote work last year provided the Law Library the opportunity to market its archival material via online exhibits. Several exhibit cases were used to rotate material on exhibit or rotate exhibits entirely. Still, online engagement with the community was lacking as far as exhibition. Enter Google Slides.

To spotlight your archival holdings, facilitate collaboration, enhance visual appeal, and publish to the web, Google Slides is a good tool. Last year, the Cracchiolo Law Library created two on-line exhibits using Google Slides: Ruth Bader Ginsburg: In Her Words and Rising from the Red. The first exhibit, In Her Words, was created by Law Library Fellow Alex Clay Hutchings (with Collections Management Librarian Jessica Ugstad) and their work inspired the second, Rising from the Red, which I created.

One way I chose to enhance my presentation and spotlight one of the Law Library’s archival objects was to use images as slide backgrounds. This allowed me to exhibit a physical object and the inscription found inside virtually (see slide 23 of Rising from the Red for an example).

There are various tutorials available online to learn how to create and enhance a Google Slides presentation. “Getting started with Google Slides” and “Add or change animations and transitions” are a good place to start. Additionally, a search of the phrase “how to create a google slide presentation” via YouTube will provide a number of useful results. Have any of you used Google Slides to exhibit your archival holdings? Did you enhance your presentation in any way? Let us know in the comments.

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LIPA intends to further its outreach efforts this year and as a new Member-at-Large on the Board, I am here to help assist with that effort. My name is Jaime Valenzuela and I am an archivist at the Cracchiolo Law Library. In particular, we at LIPA are interested in establishing a greater connection with LIPA points of contact. If you are that point of contact, feel free to reach out to me or Michelle Trumbo, LIPA’s Executive Director, directly. If you are looking to get more involved with LIPA or to see what we have been up to, please join us at our Annual Membership Meeting on Wednesday, July 28, from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm ET. For those unable to attend, please feel free to reach us via the LIPA Contact Page.