Nebraska Memories the EZ Way

Is your library, local historical society, museum, or other local cultural heritage organization mulling over ways to get your historical photos, documents, slides or other items onto the web so more than just those who visit your physical space can see what you have to offer? Has your institution considered adding your materials to the Nebraska Memories project? We know that our cultural heritage institutions have little time or money to spend on digitization projects so we are offering options to libraries, museums and historical societies around the state to help them get their precious items on the web at no charge through the Nebraska Memories project. The Commission recently received a grant from Nebraska’s State Records Board allowing us to purchase equipment to create a mobile scanning center. This mobile scanning center can help us quickly get your items into the Nebraska Memories project, providing instant access to digitized images of Nebraska’s history and culture in a collective, searchable database on the web. The only thing you need to do is pick out the items you would like to add to the Nebraska Memories project and have some basic information about these items on hand. We will work with you at the beginning of the project to find out what items you have that would be a good fit for the project. So you may wonder exactly how does this work? First contact us via phone or email so we can discuss the items you want to add to the project. We may even come to your library or museum to see your collection. One of our staff will then visit your library with the mobile scanning center and scan your images for you. There is no charge for this service. We can start with up to 50 items and discuss doing more as the project progresses. We will then work with you to fill out EZMetadata forms either on paper or online so we have some basic descriptive data about your historical materials. This would include any information you have about the item such as a date, creator or location. Our staff will use this basic information about each item and create the cataloging or metadata record describing your item. If you have some treasures, whether it be a few or a hundred, that you would like to add to the Nebraska Memories site, please consider letting us do the scanning and cataloging work for you. Please contact either Shannon White or Beth Goble via email or 800-307-2665 to get started. Be sure to take a look at the Nebraska Memories site and consider what you would like to make available to the world and give us a call. We would love to be able to help you get your historical materials on the web for everyone to enjoy.