Wyoming State Digital Library

BACKGROUND & BUSINESS PROBLEM

The Wyoming State Library wants to create a digital archive of their historic newspaper collection. Their collection of historic newspapers from local counties and municipalities dates back to the 1800's and has been preserved on microfilm. They want to digitize the 850,000 pages of newspaper following current best practices and standards to preserve the microfilm while making the newspaper available to the public. The Wyoming State Library also has a collection of trademarks and trademark applications that need to be digitized and made readily available as well. The Library envisions a digital archiving/asset management system to store, search, retrieve, browse, and manage the final electronic newspaper and trademark collection. Since the collection is large and will continue growing, they need an application that can perform full text searching and utilize more sophisticated searching techniques so they can locate document hits with pinpoint accuracy.

“PTFS is a perfect partner for our project considering their library science, content management, and digitization expertise. The company has proven skills and a unique ability to build digital libraries as well as a proven track record of successfully implementing these large newspaper projects,” Said Lesley Boughton of Wyoming State Library.

SOLUTION

PTFS’s proposal included digitization services for the microfilm newspaper and trademark document collections, a fully configured server, installing the digital archiving application, loading the images into the system, and training. The State chose to partner with PTFS and Sirsi Dynix because of their library science and digitization expertise. PTFS also worked with the Library to create a plan for archiving new content as it is created so that the Digital Library will always be current. All these unique capabilities come together to provide the Wyoming State Library a solid partner to make this important project a success.

BENEFITS

- The existing collection of microfilm can be preserved so it does not undergo further degradation from    a microfilm reader.
- The public will have electronic access to the newspaper. Any potential user with access to a browser    can now access the entire newspaper collection.
- ArchivalWare provides sophisticated searching tools so hits within a document can be found with    pinpoint accuracy.