On Tuesday, January 31st at 5:30 p.m. the Southwest Harbor Public Library will present a program titled “A Behind the Scenes Tour of the Digital Archive” with library trustee and interim curator George Soules. The program is in-person with online viewing available. 

The Digital Archive is an online app that is used by 18 cultural heritage organizations on Mount Desert Island to manage and share their digital collections of historical photographs, documents, maps, and research materials. Mr. Soules, a software architect, originally developed the software for the library in Southwest Harbor before other organizations adopted it. He will tell the history of the project and how it was funded, and give an overview of the underlying technologies that make it work.

During the presentation, Mr. Soules will show dozens of photographs from the library’s collection to demonstrate what the Digital Archive does and why it is such a powerful tool for revealing and sharing how islanders and “people from away” lived on and visited MDI in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Part of the talk will focus on the process and technologies that archivists at the Southwest Harbor Public Library are using to tackle the library’s massive backlog of historical photographs and other materials. Their goal is to make as much of the collection publicly accessible as quickly as possible by taking a new approach that is efficient and doable using only limited human and financial resources.

Please add alerts@mail.libcal.com to your email contacts. Your registration will be sent to you from this address. If you do not receive a confirmation email, call 207-244-7065 or email circulation@swhplibrary.org.

Registration required. To register and for info, visit www.swhplibrary.org, email circulation@swhplibrary.org, or call 207-244-7065.

Image: Southwest Harbor Busline https://swhplibrary.net/digitalarchive/items/show/2062