digitizing the aldo leopold papers

Cooperating with a Non-Profit and the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

Center

David Null, Director, University Archives and Records Management Services, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Considered by many as the father of wildlife management and of the United States’ wilderness system, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator, writer, and

outdoor enthusiast.

Author of A Sand County Almanac

Includes essay “The Land Ethic”

“A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an

ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects

a conviction of individual responsibility for the

health of land.”

Donated to University Archives in 1960s

Some from Department of Wildlife Management, some from Leopold family

Collection consists of 27.6 cubic feet, 3 reels microfilm, 5 folios, 3 cases, 7 diaries, 12 journals, 1 scrapbook, 1000+ photos.

Founded in 1982, by Leopold’s children: Starker, Luna, Nina, Carl, and Estella

Family’s literary rights assigned to the foundation

Who should apply: University Archives or Leopold Foundation?

Leopold Foundation was conducting a $7,750,000 fundraising campaign

Few private foundations seem to apply for these types of grants

Less paperwork if ALF got grant

Aldo Leopold Foundation applied for grant, in cooperation with the University Archives

Awarded two-year, $110,530 matching grant, Jan. 2007

The ALF hired the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center to do the digitization

UW-Madison General Library System/UWDCC agreed to donate $25,ooo in scanning costs

UW Digital Collections Center in existence since 2001, currently funded by UW-Madison and UW-System

At the time of the application had digitized over 1,300,000 pages of text and over 40,000 images. Very good at estimating costs, timelines, etc.

So had very good infrastructure for the project

Already had an EAD guide to the collection, but needed revision

Hired a graduate student to go through the physical collection and also revise the EAD guide

Began digitization with Leopold’s journals and diaries, which are heavily used and fragile

No additional metadata was added

Online equivalent of paging through a folder or a journal

Digitized using UWDCC’s Electronic Facsimile Text (Pageturner/EFacs)

Images were done in JPEG 2000, so can zoom in closely

High resolution tiffs and metadata stored in 3 locations.

Estimates from the UWDCC for digitization have been pretty accurate, actually somewhat lower than expected

Running about $ 1.42 per page (varies with type of material, e.g. journals vs. letter)

Includes actual scanning, plus document preparation, metadata, project management, quality control, etc. (total of 17 items)

Most textual material is digitized (27,000 pages up so far)

Photos are the major remaining thing

Leopold Foundation will do their own web page to get people to the site

Leopold Foundation will do some modules aimed at school children and other groups

Will do more publicity this fall

Don’t have much feedback yet

Do some evaluation/assessment

Will post more on costs, feedback, etc. on the web site

“I should add that the beauty of having this archive on-line was made abundantly clear when I looked into the Charles Elton papers at the Bodleian, with Julianne Warren. Nothing whatsoever is on-line, except a list of what they have, some of which looks potentially very important to her project and to mine (they are somewhat related). So one of us is going to have to go to Oxford to dredge this archive, and that's even harder than going to Madison. The contrasting experience with the 2 archives made me realize how digitizing archives will revolutionize research and make archives much more valuable.”

The Aldo Leopold Archives http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AldoLeopold/

EAD Guide

http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-lib- leopoldpapers

Aldo Leopold Foundation

http://www.aldoleopold.org

David Null, UW Archives

dnull@library.wisc.edu