Furthering missions of preservation and especially access, McGoogan Library staff regularly digitizes materials within the library’s archives, ensuring touchpoints for generations.
Among their accomplishments, library staff recently digitized 65 historical medical films thanks to a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). These films shed light on “mid-century psychiatry, medical education, and the use of film and media in healthcare training,” Digital Archivist Larissa Krayer wrote in a description.
Digitizing these films offers great potential value to researchers seeking to gauge how the healthcare field once understood and treated mental health.
An archivist’s approach
McGoogan archivists digitize everything from works on paper to works created with increasingly obsolete technologies such as 16mm film.
Digitized artifacts can then be used in research and teaching, displayed in online exhibits or on touch screens around campus.
Beyond materials like those covered by the CLIR grant, archivists often handle videos of groundbreakings and other moments now considered historically relevant to the UNMC community.
“If it’s on a screen, I’ve probably touched it,” Krayer said.
To complete this work, archivists familiarize themselves with technology old and new, Krayer said—and where it can be found. This might mean “scrounging” EBay, visiting the electronics section at a thrift store or absorbing knowledge from campus IT, she said.
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