Guest Post: Digitization and Access at the New Bedford Whaling Museum

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Logbook of the Gay Head of New Bedford Mass. 1856-1860.
Logbook of the Gay Head of New Bedford Mass. 1856-1860.

By Michael Lapides, Director of Digital Initiatives at New Bedford Whaling Museum

Back in 2012 a team from the Boston Public Library, led by Tom Blake, came to New Bedford to recruit the Museum into the Digital Commonwealth. We are so happy they did! While we had and still have a massive online collections database (over 50,000 records and related images) it is essentially buried, not crawled by search engines, and therefore hidden from a wider public view.  Participating in the Digital Commonwealth is a remedy to this lock-out.

Our digitization program started with our whaling logbook and journal collection, 223 are currently available via the Internet Archive, 152 of these are also available via the Digital Public Library of America.  We will continue to contribute from our collection of more than 2300 volumes, the largest and finest collection of whaling logbooks and journals in the world. The bulk of these primary sources document American whaling (1754-1925) although British, Australian, Norwegian and Azorean voyages are also included.

Our cartographic collections number around 700 pieces including sea charts used by whaling masters, bound pilot charts and atlases, decorative maps, maps and charts of key geographical regions significant to whaling at different times in history as well as maps and charts of the local Old Dartmouth region. Currently the Digital Commonwealth has 10 examples, representing oceans and whaling cruising grounds. The zooming functionality makes study of their contents possible.

Map of South Atlantic Ocean. 1857.
Map of South Atlantic Ocean. 1857.

Our manuscript collections  (over 140 distinct collections) help to complete the historical picture told through these digitized collections. Currently manuscripts are discoverable online via EAD Finding Aids. We hope someday to digitize and share choice manuscript collections through the good offices of the Boston Public Library and the Digital Commonwealth. These include late 17th century property deeds and indentures through the various mercantile investments and business practices of the agents of whaling and merchant voyages, church records, architecture, personal papers of significant (and lesser known) people of the 19th century and industrial, banking, and modern whaling documentation extending well into the 20th century.

 

New Collections Added to Digital Commonwealth in March

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This month we’ve added a lot of new items to already existing collections, and we harvested 25 new collections from the Provincetown History Preservation Project! Make sure you check out the great new photographs, videos, manuscripts, artwork, and other materials added this month!

Group Portrait With Cat, from the Glass Plates Collection from Provincetown History Preservation Project.
Group Portrait With Cat, from the Glass Plates Collection from Provincetown History Preservation Project.

Boston Public Library 

Anti-Slavery (Collection of Distinction) : 500 items added to existing collection

Costume & Set Designs : 21 items added to existing collection

Emily Dickinson Collection, 1862-1907 : 6 items added to existing collection

Lincoln Public Library 

Lincoln Town Archives : 3 items added to existing collection

Provincetown History Preservation Project

25 newly harvested collections : 4163 items

U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center

Natick Soldier Systems Center Photographic Collection : 6926 items added to existing collection

Guest Post: Griffin Museum of Photography

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By Paula Tognarelli, Executive Director and Curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography
Nantucket, Mass. from the Griffin Museum of Photography
Nantucket, Mass. from the Griffin Museum of Photography

 

The Digital Commonwealth has changed how Arthur Griffin is seen by our audience. Making Mr. Griffin’s images available on-line after digitizing of a portion of our archives has opened up interest by the public in ways we never thought would happen. We have had inquiries on images from the 1930’s – 1940’s like Connecticut Tobacco Farms, old Boston buildings, Boston Common nativity scenes, Mt Washington’s Weather Observatory to name just a few of the hundreds of requests we now get. We are grateful to the Boston Public Library and the Digital Commonwealth for their efforts and vision.

 

L Street Brownies from Griffin Museum of Photography.
L Street Brownies from Griffin Museum of Photography.

 

What we have learned from the efforts of the Boston Public Library and the Digital Commonwealth is that there is much opportunity located within our archives, that continued effort must be made to digitize the whole archive and that resources need to be put in place to manage and fulfill the image requests from the public. On-line our archive can now be enjoyed by everyone. Arthur Griffin would have enjoyed these times.