Highlights Archives
Digitization of the Magazine of History Complete
A year ago, the only way to see most of the research on Wisconsin history was to travel to a university library or to the Society library in Madison and track down the Wisconsin Magazine of History. Today, more than a thousand people a day consult it for free without ever leaving their homes, offices, or classrooms. How? Through the Wisconsin Magazine of History online archives.
In October 2005 the Schoenleber Foundation of Milwaukee awarded the Society $20,000 to convert the magazine to digital form and to publish it on the Web. Over the next few months, staff ran a pilot project with the help of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to test their methodology on the Wisconsin Historical Collections (1855-1915), the predecessor of the magazine. This test put 10,000 pages of the earliest Wisconsin documents online. At the same time, the staff conducted interviews and focus groups with readers of the traditional paper version of the magazine to learn how they wanted to be able to use an electronic version.
Work then began in earnest to scan, index, and put every issue online. After all 37,000 pages had been converted to digital form, an abstract of each article was written that would allow them to be searchable by topic and keyword. The first 35 volumes (through 1952) went live on January 8, 2007, and additions were published every Friday as the work proceeded, until the whole run — 3,336 articles published between 1917-2007 — was online in October.
Today readers are consulting the digital version of the Society's magazine about 1,100 times a day. "Just a great big thank you for putting the magazine online," one user wrote recently. "I've been a Society member for a few years and have loved reading the Wisconsin Magazine of History; I just have no place to store them and have hated to have to throw them out. Now I have my cake and can eat it too!"
The online edition seems to appeal especially to Wisconsin natives who have moved away: "Hooray! Hoorah! Bravo! Thank you!" wrote one. "You have given me another reason to be proud to be a Wisconsinite (and curse again the circumstances that have pressed me to live 20 miles on the other side of the border). I assure you, your efforts will result in many happy hours of reading."
Together, the magazine and the collections total almost 50,000 pages and contain nearly all the most frequently cited primary and secondary sources on the state's past. This makes them popular with educators at all levels. A local public librarian was particularly effusive: "Thank you so much for making this fabulous information available. You folks are my heroes, you provide so much incredible information and all of the state benefits greatly."
So see what all the talk is about and start exploring thousands of stories about our Wisconsin heritage today.
:: Posted November 14, 2007
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