CAC Awarded Ohio LSTA Metadata Mini-Grant

The State Library of Ohio awarded over $20,000 in Ohio LSTA Metadata Mini-Grants to enable five libraries to prepare their collections for the Ohio Digital Network (ODN) and Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Libraries of all types, museums, and cultural heritage organizations were eligible to apply for a State Library Metadata Mini-Grant for up to $4,999 in federal LSTA funds. The awarded funds may be used to pay metadata contractors, vendors, or obtain other services (including digitization) needed to ensure their collections meet the ODN and DPLA metadata application profile guidelines.  

Bowling Green State University's Center for Archival Collections (CAC) is one of five institutions receiving Metadata Mini-Grants. Other institutions include Lorain Public Library, Ohio University, the Ohio State University, and Wilmington College. They will work on their collections from October 2022 through June 2023, then the metadata for these collections will be added to DPLA as a part of the Ohio Digital Network.  

"I'm proud that the Metadata Mini-Grant initiative continues to support Ohio's libraries and cultural heritage institutions as they highlight interesting and educational digital collections to share beyond their local users," expressed Evan T. Struble, Associate State Librarian for Library Development. "I can't wait for these five new collections to make their way into DPLA, allowing for them to be more easily accessed by students, researchers, and history enthusiasts world-wide." 

As Ohio’s service hub for the DPLA, ODN is working to make digital collections from all ODN cultural heritage institutions more accessible to the world. DPLA serves as a portal to over 40 million cultural heritage items from libraries, museums, and archives across the country. Freely accessible to all, DPLA empowers people to learn, grow, and contribute to a diverse and better-functioning society by maximizing access to our shared history, culture, and knowledge. The Ohio LSTA Metadata Mini-Grants awarded will be used both for digitization and for metadata remediation, all for collections to be added to DPLA.   

Bowling Green State University will utilize the grant for the Dora E. Giffen papers. Dora E. Giffen, born to American missionaries in Egypt in 1897, returned to Egypt as a missionary from 1920-1926 under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. She corresponded regularly with family members, describing her work and daily life as well as activities occurring in a nation that was increasingly mobilizing under anti-colonial nationalists. Her correspondence provides a window into events within the country while it was formally occupied by the British and after the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence. 

Grace McClurg Carson papers: Lima native Grace McClurg Carson was assigned as a foreign missionary by the Methodist Church to Hinghwa, China, serving as teacher and supervisor of the girls' boarding school from 1912-1926. She corresponded regularly with family members and supporters in a period immediately following the 1911 Revolution, when the nascent Republic of China was subject to fragmentation and competing provincial military leadership. 

Visual images depicting rural and urban locations throughout Egypt and China, as well as missionaries and residents engaged in daily activities, complement the correspondence. It appears that little of this kind of content (personal correspondence, versus travelogues or reports) by individual missionaries has been digitized and made available online in the DPLA or in other repositories.

Updated: 06/05/2023 09:16AM