UA Archives (Upper Arlington, Ohio)
Encyclopedia
Upper Arlington, Ohio
Upper Arlington is a suburban city in Franklin County, Ohio, United States, on the northwest side of the Columbus metropolitan area. The population was 33,686 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, and is part of the Upper Arlington Public Library's digital library initiative. Free online access to these materials via the UA Archives website is provided in accordance with the Library's mission to help the community explore Upper Arlington's heritage and grow through a lifetime of learning.
Through the UA Archives, the Library cultivates ongoing partnerships with the Upper Arlington Historical Society, the City of Upper Arlington, community organizations, and individuals to digitize
Digitizing
Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal...
items of historical interest and make them available to the public. By working with the Historical Society and other community groups, the UA Archives digital library initiative supports the goal of preserving Upper Arlington's history as well as the Upper Arlington Historic District
Historic district (United States)
In the United States, a historic district is a group of buildings, properties, or sites that have been designated by one of several entities on different levels as historically or architecturally significant. Buildings, structures, objects and sites within a historic district are normally divided...
's listing on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
Mission statement
The goal of the UA Archives digital libraryDigital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
program is to preserve original documents, photographs, maps, and other media related to the history and culture of Upper Arlington, Ohio, while offering increased visibility and improved access to these valuable primary reference sources
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....
.
History
The Upper Arlington Public Library began preliminary work on their digitization program in November 2002. These initial preparations included researching existing digital library initiatives and standards. Digitization program management was appointed, a formal collection development plan was drafted, and potential users, partnerships, and program goals were identified. Through the UA Archives, the Library would lend their expertise to other community organizations and individuals by digitizing, cataloging, and providing access to historically and culturally significant materials related to Upper Arlington
Upper Arlington, Ohio
Upper Arlington is a suburban city in Franklin County, Ohio, United States, on the northwest side of the Columbus metropolitan area. The population was 33,686 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
.
The Upper Arlington Historical Society was a natural choice as the first community organization with which the Library would partner. The Society and its members play an active role in the community, which is also a reflection of residents' interest in the history of their city. In addition to their local history archives, the Historical Society maintains preservation guidelines; a historical home inventory; and the Upper Arlington Wall of Honor, a tribute to notable area residents. Due to the volunteer nature of the organization, however, the rich resources of the Historical Society were not always easily accessible to the community. The Library approached the Upper Arlington Historical Society in the spring of 2003 with an offer to digitize and provide online access to their holdings. In November of that year the Library penned a formal agreement with the Historical Society.
Pancho Villa
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
Mexican troops.
The debut of the UA Archives website also included approximately 2,000 pages of text and photographs from the Norwester magazine, the original community newspaper, published from November 1917 through March 1922. Among other topics, the Norwester magazine covered local residents, homes, schools, sports, and daily life. The magazine also included first-hand accounts of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, received from local residents stationed in Europe, and chronicled life on the home front as community members bought Liberty Bonds
Liberty bond
A Liberty Bond was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which...
and war savings stamps
War savings stamps
The war savings stamp was a patriotic program used by the United States Treasury to help fund participation in World War I and World War II, and was principally aimed at school-age children. Savings stamps were available in ten cent and twenty-five cent versions, and provided interest...
, planted backyard war gardens
Victory garden
Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply...
, and debated the patriotic virtues of continuing to spend their money versus saving.
Collection Development
Upper Arlington Public Library staff select materials for the UA Archives, subject to the policies and mandates of the Library's Board of Trustees. The UA Archives program actively solicits materials relating to the history of Upper Arlington, Ohio, from local government, community organizations, businesses, and individuals. Historical materials in all formats are considered and may consist of photographs, documents, arts and crafts, and audio or video recordings. Selection criteria include historical significance and relevance of the subject or its depiction of daily life, the educational or entertainment value of the subject, and the availability of sufficient and reliable descriptions of the material. All items must either be in the public domain or have written copyright permissions granted before inclusion in the UA Archives.The UA Archives encourages the digitization of items even if a potential donor wishes to retain the original source materials. In this case, the original items remain in the ownership of the donor, and the Upper Arlington Public Library assumes ownership of the digital representations. When materials are acquired through permanent donation, the Library encourages the transfer of original items to the Upper Arlington Historical Society for permanent storage after the digitization process has been completed.
In addition to the Norwester magazines and historical photographs included when the UA Archives site launched, new materials are continually incorporated. The City of Upper Arlington has provided maps depicting the community's annexation history and historic district, and the Library has added historic 1880s plat maps from its own collection. The Library has also partnered with the Upper Arlington City School District, which granted permission for digitization of the Upper Arlington High School
Upper Arlington High School (Ohio)
Upper Arlington High School is the sole high school in the Upper Arlington City School District in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a northwest suburb of Columbus, Ohio. It receives students from Jones Middle School and Hastings Middle School. The principal of the high school is Mr. Kip Greenhill...
yearbooks from 1923–present. All volumes through 1999 were added to the UA Archives site on October 7, 2009, with one subsequent volume to be added each year. Oral histories from early residents and local war veterans will also eventually be added to the UA Archives site.
Technical information
Photographs and most text-based items in the UA Archives collection have been scanned by Upper Arlington Public Library staff and volunteers as 600 dpi TIFF files with 24-bit color using an Epson Expression 1640XL 11" x 17" flatbed scanner. Optical character recognitionOptical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
(OCR) was performed using OmniPage Pro, and low-resolution JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
files were generated for onscreen display. CONTENTdm
CONTENTdm
CONTENTdm is digital collection management software that allows for the upload, description, management and access of digital collections. It is Unicode and Z39.50 compatible. CONTENTdm can handle documents, PDFs, finding aids , images, videos, and audio files...
is used as the digital collection management software for the UA Archives project, and Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
is used for image manipulation, rotation, and cropping. Starting in 2009, derivative lossless JPEG2000 images, OCR text (using ABBYY FineReader), and PDF files are generated via CONTENTdm.