Jason Buydos
Director, Technical Services
Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

Expanding access to materials and reaching patrons unable or unwilling to come to the library’s physical location is just one of the goals of digitization.  Digitization can also help bring communities, regardless of physical location, closer together and help educate the public on their shared past.  Additionally, digitization allows libraries the ability to showcase collections that are not well known, or that are too fragile, large or rare to put on physical display.

In October 2007, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County received an Institute of Museum and Library Services LSTA grant award by the State Library of Ohio. Federal funds were used to purchase equipment for initiating a digitization program.  The initial focus of the digitization program is genealogy and local history.

Currently, The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Virtual Library webpage (http://virtuallibrary.cincinnatilibrary.org), includes 44 books that were published in the early years of Cincinnati, including an original copy of Maxwell’s Code (1796), the first civil and criminal legal code for the Northwest Territory, which included Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.  These 44 books, which are part of a departmental display, were digitized to cross promote the display in the physical library and the Virtual Library. Both displays point to each other, all the books that are on physical display have been digitized, so patrons can see the books on display in the brick and mortar library as well as peruse and read the same books at the Virtual Library.

In addition to the 44 books in the display, there are 17 City Directories dating from as early as 1819.  Before the conclusion of the grant period in September 2008, 161 City Directories that chronicle the residents and businesses of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County area before 1819 and 1930 will be online and full-text searchable. This greatly enhances the patron’s ability to utilize these resources to gain a better understanding of our shared past as well as information regarding the individual patron’s genealogical history.

Material from The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s collection, material from various individuals within the community as well as institutional partners will also be scanned and made available to a wider audience online. Some examples include:

• City Directories from the Cincinnati Museum Center that the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s collection either does not own, or are in poor shape
• Whaling Captains’ Ship Log books from the Nantucket Historical Association
• Minutes and historical information from the Swedenborgian Church of Cincinnati, which includes many details about the very early history of Cincinnati.

Many people think of books or manuscripts when they think of digitization. However, other material pertaining to local history is also popular with the online patrons. For example, the Virtual Library includes:

• Inland Riverboat Photographs
• Letters penned by Abraham Lincoln
• Victorian Valentines

These materials are on display within the Virtual Library in wiki form.  A wiki is a type of website that allows the users of the website to control, to a certain extent, the content of the site. This allows the users to take ownership of the online collection and add and share their own expertise regarding the material. These collections were selected due to their size and rarity. Once completed, the Inland Riverboat Photographs collection alone will total over 19,000 images and the Letters written by Abraham Lincoln are considered very valuable and are far too delicate to put on any long-term display. To date, the three wikis have generated 110,000 hits, or web uses, since their debut on September 7th, 2007. Prior to their availability online, few people knew that PLCHC owned these collections. Additionally, like the book scanning, when patrons find out about the online availability of these collections, some individuals are happy to have portions of their private collection added to the online resources available, material that would not have been available to the public otherwise.

Looking ahead, there is a lot of interest from other local area libraries to have material that they own digitized. Most libraries do not have enough material to justify the expense of creating their own Digital Services department. They are, however, willing to share their materials with the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for digitization and inclusion in the Virtual Library in order to increase access to their material online. Cooperation helps all libraries serve their patrons.