From a Vacant Liberian Mansion to the ICO: The William V.S. Tubman Photography Collection

Abstract

The William V.S. Tubman Photograph Collection was the first to pilot DLP's Photocat web application and an early collection ingested into ICO. The IU Liberian Collections (IULC) learned many lessons between its first 2004 encounter with the Tubman albums in the damp library of an abandoned country mansion in Liberia and their becoming publicly available world-wide via ICO in 2011. Funded by grants from the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme and Africana Librarians Council/Title VI Librarians/CAMP, the IULC worked with numerous IU Libraries and SLIS staff, students and faculty. The Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory, IU Archives and the the African Studies Collection made very important contributions, but the Digital Library Program had the greatest impact on the project through their digital library infrastructure and related tools. The presentation will review the project's seven-year history, focusing on lessons learned as an early adopter regarding project workflow and dealing with the design and content of metadata.