The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1065-075X.htm
OCLC
30,3
192
Received 2 February 2014
Revised 12 March 2014
Accepted 12 March 2014
OCLC Systems & Services:
International digital library
perspectives
Vol. 30 No. 3, 2014
pp. 192-202
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1065-075X
DOI 10.1108/OCLC-02-2014-0010
Collaborative publishing in
digital history
Ken Middleton and Amy York
Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide examples of how partnerships can be used to build
innovative digital collections.
Design/methodology/approach – This article explores multiple aspects of Middle Tennessee State
University’s (MTSU) Walker Library’s partnerships with the Center for Historic Preservation and
MTSU’s graduate program in public history. Specific topics covered include pairing interpretive essays
with groups of highly relevant images to engage students, incorporating responsive design to
encourage use of mobile devices and creating an interactive map that links locations to digital content.
Findings – By strengthening existing partnerships and proactively seeking new opportunities,
libraries that do not have unique primary source collections can take a leading role in publishing digital
history collections. Historians have been vital to the success of the Library’s digital projects,
particularly those that incorporate multiple layers of historical context.
Originality/value – This is one of the few articles about digital collections to cover responsive Web
design (particularly within CONTENTdm), partnerships between libraries and public history academic
programs and the value of multiple layers of historical context (metadata, essays matched with images
and lesson plans).
Keywords Digital collections, Web design, Collaborative digitization, CONTENTdm, LAMs,
Public history
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Zorich et al. (2008) and Bishoff (2009) have called for more collaboration among libraries,
archives and museums (LAMs) in developing digital collections. Statewide
collaborative digitization programs continue to make progress in digitizing content
from small- to medium-sized institutions. A growing number of these collaboratives are
sharing metadata with the Digital Public Library of America, making the dream of
having a one-stop portal for accessing digital content about US history and culture
within sight.
Yet many states (e.g. Tennessee) lack active collaborative digitization programs,
leaving LAMs that have excellent collections looking for partners that have the
infrastructure for digitization. Libraries that already have a digitization program can
address this need by seeking content partners. For instance, Indiana University –
Purdue University Indianapolis University Libraries has partnered with Conner Prairie
to digitize the historic park’s craft and textile collections (see www.connerprairie.org/
Learn-And-Do/Indiana-History/Digital-Collections.aspx).
Middle Tennessee State University’s Walker Library is also in an excellent position
to respond to this call. The Library is administratively separate from the campus units
that have large collections of unique primary source materials: the Albert Gore Research Collaborative
Center, the Center for Historic Preservation (CHP) and the Center for Popular Music.
Rather than viewing this negatively and avoiding digital projects altogether, we have
publishing in
been proactive in developing projects that include content from repositories on campus, digital history
within the community and across the state.
The Library has found eager partners in the CHP and MTSU’s graduate program in
public history, both of which are preparing the next generation of public historians for 193
careers as cultural resource managers, curators, archivists, oral historians, historic
preservationists, government historians and historical consultants, among many other
job titles (National Council on Public History, 2013). Regardless of their job title, public
historians share a common goal of expanding the reach of history beyond the classroom
to a broader public.
As the following examples illustrate, public historians couple this inclusive
perspective with skills that translate well to the online environment. They often have
experience in working with multiple LAMs, which is invaluable in securing partners for
collaborative digitization projects. Their experience in providing historical context,
from writing for exhibit catalogs and brochures to appearing as experts in Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentaries, extends naturally to online exhibits. Finally,
several graduate programs in public history and the digital humanities are becoming
leaders in developing software applications that streamline the development of digital
projects and improve the user experience.
The Craft Revival Collection (www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CraftRevival/),
developed by the Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library in partnership with area
museums (e.g. Museum of the Cherokee Indian), is an excellent example of how a digital
collection that includes content from multiple repositories is much more than the sum of its
parts. Essays about the types of crafts in the collection provide historical context for the
individual items. For instance, the essay on rivercane basketry not only explains why
double-woven baskets were particularly appropriate as storage containers, but also links to
an example of this type of basket in the digital collection. This wealth of background
material is particularly impressive because CONTENTdm, the content management system
used for the project, does not offer templates for the development of online exhibits that could
pull content from the collection. This limitation is arguably the main reason why the vast
majority of digital collections on the CONTENTdm platform offer only token historical
context at best.
Omeka, an open-source application developed by the Center for History and New
Media at George Mason University, offers an alternative to CONTENTdm that provides
seamless interaction between digital collections and online exhibits. Students in New
York University’s graduate program in Archives and Public History are using Omeka to
develop the Greenwich Village History (http://gvh.aphdigital.org/). Over the past
several years, they have created 69 online exhibits that use items from the digital
collection. Smart use of social media expands the audience beyond users who enter the
collection landing page; each record in the database includes social bookmarking
options, and a blog showcases specific exhibits and digitized items.
The Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University has
developed CurateScape, a mobile app framework that can be used in conjunction with
Omeka. The Center used CurateScape to create Cleveland Historical, a site that offers rich
content and historical context (in the form of stories) in a mobile environment (Tebeau, 2013).
OCLC Graduates from Cleveland State and such programs at George Mason University and the
University of Richmond are producing graduates who not only have a firm grasp of history,
30,3 but also have the technical skills that will further increase their value in collaborative
digitization projects.
The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska at
Lincoln (UNL) illustrates the value of libraries partnering with historians and other
194 humanities scholars. A joint program of the UNL Libraries and the College of Arts and
Sciences, the Center has developed 38 digital projects. Historians are lead partners in many
of these projects, including Civil War Washington (http://civilwardc.org/), Gilded Age Plains
City (http://gildedage.unl.edu/) and Railroads and the Making of Modern America (http://
railroads.unl.edu/). Although not all historians who engage in digital history projects like
these label themselves as “public historians”, their work is making history more accessible to
a broad public audience. A recent study of the research practices of historians found that this
public history perspective was an important motivating factor for their engagement in
digital scholarship (Rutner and Schonfeld, 2012).
Given the wealth of benefits that public historians bring to digital projects, Walker
Library has been fortunate in partnering with the CHP and MTSU’s graduate program in
public history. This article will highlight features of digital collections that were direct
products of these partnerships: content from multiple LAMs; responsive Web design;
multiple layers of historical context; and interactive maps that link to digital content within
and across collections. The value that historians (and historians-to-be) have added to these
digital projects will be a common thread.

Overview of Walker Library digital collections

The Library’s 15 digital projects (http://digital.mtsu.edu) include ⬎ 8,300 items. Major
subject strengths of the collections include the history of MTSU, local history and Tennessee
history (see Figure 1). Of these collections, ten have involved content partners; three
collections were the result of partnerships with cultural heritage institutions that lack the
resources for digitization: Farms of Cannon County from the Arts Center of Cannon County,
a public health photograph collection from the Rutherford County Archives and the
Rutherford County Historical Society Publications.

Center for historic preservation

Our partnership with MTSU’s CHP has been particularly productive. The CHP has
voluminous documentation of its preservation activities across the South, contacts in
cultural heritage institutions in Tennessee and an impressive record of securing grant
funding (see www.mtsuhistpres.org/ for a list of projects). Grounded strongly in the public
history discipline, the CHP also wants the products of their initiatives to reach the widest
possible audience. The three projects detailed below provide multiple examples of the
benefits of this partnership.

Shades of Gray and Blue

Shades of Gray and Blue (www.civilwarshades.org), a site that explores the Tennessee
homefront during the Civil War, is an example of a successful collaborative project that
involved numerous LAMs. The collection is organized into eight themes, each of which ties
together a set of essays and related images. For example, the “Holding fast to beauty” theme
includes stories that highlight the efforts of women to maintain civility and beauty in an
atmosphere of conflict and hardship. The stories and the images play off one another,
 Collaborative
publishing in
digital history

195

Figure 1.
The MTSU digital
collections landing page
highlights featured
collections. While some
individual collections are
linked here (Southern
Places, Shades of Gray
and Blue, Farms of
Cannon County), others
are grouped by theme. For
instance, Rutherford
County Collections goes to
a list of seven distinct
collections

offering the user a deeper understanding of each. The site provides a wealth of historical
context. In addition to the essays, the metadata for individual digital objects includes a
historical notes field, and lesson plans encourage use of the site in the classroom by linking
content to Tennessee’s curriculum standards.
The project was a labor of love by two individuals: Celia Walker, Special Projects
Librarian at Vanderbilt University, and Susan Knowles, Research Fellow at Middle
Tennessee State University’s CHP. Over the course of three years, they visited 23 Tennessee
counties and a total of 74 archives, historic homes, museums and cemeteries in search of
relevant art, photographs and artifacts. Their wealth of experience as museum curators (and
Knowles’ PhD in public history) influenced every aspect of the project: conceptualizing the
project; selecting items to digitize; and writing historical notes for individual item records.
This complex project required numerous collaborators with different skill sets.
Working in tandem with Knowles and Walker, the Library had multiple responsibilities:
processing image files from multiple repositories; creating a metadata template;
assisting in entering metadata; and building the public interface in WordPress.
Historians, archivists and museum curators wrote the stories. The project team met with
OCLC a design firm, Anode, to plan the design of the site. Jeff Sellers, Curator of Education at
the Tennessee State Museum, developed the lesson plans. The willingness of these
30,3 collaborators to work together toward a common goal is one reason why the site won the
Tennessee Association of Museums Award of Excellence in 2013.

Trials and triumphs and responsive design

196 Trials and Triumphs, our latest collaboration with the CHP, highlights how African
Americans (and other groups, such as farm families and tenants) built effective communities
in Tennessee in spite of the intolerance and prejudice of the Jim Crow era (see
http://digital.mtsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15838coll7). Similar in design to Shades of
Gray and Blue, the site features digitized primary source content from LAMs and thematic
essays by historians.
Educators have emphasized to Carroll Van West, Director of the CHP, that students are
increasingly using smartphones and tablets for research. To disseminate the information to
the widest audience possible, we set out to make the Trials Web site mobile friendly. We
decided to host the site through CONTENTdm, though it would be similar in format to
Shades of Gray and Blue, which is a Wordpress site. While CONTENTdm does not currently
provide built-in support for mobile layouts, it does allow a user to upload fully customized
landing pages and additional pages. Rather than build a separate site for desktop users and
mobile users, we chose to build a responsive site for Triumphs and Trials. Image sizes and
layouts are automatically adjusted for different screen sizes using Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) and media queries. This site is still under development, but a screen capture of the
landing page is below (see Figure 2).
Beginning with mobile friendliness in mind, we decided to use a simple vertical layout on
the landing page that would be visually appealing and usable on all screens. This layout
minimized the number of media queries that were needed.
The site was developed using the Fluid Grid Layout feature in Dreamweaver CS6.
When using the fluid grid layout, default widths and other basic layout features are set
for mobile, tablet and desktop displays in an auto-generated stylesheet, though all can
be edited (see http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-dreamweaver-cs6/using-fluid-grid-layouts/

Figure 2.
Thanks to a fluid grid
layout, the landing page
for Trials and Triumphs
(left) is accessible to both
desktop and mobile users.
The essay page (right)
shows the mobile layout
of an essay page
for an introductory video). We also used media queries to change out menu styles and Collaborative
images for different screen widths.
The essay pages feature thumbnails of related images to the right of the text on larger
publishing in
screens, and the images fall to the bottom of the page on small mobile devices. To avoid digital history
massive scrolling on the small screen to reach images, we used jQuery and CSS to insert an
expandable DIV (HTML section/division) in the text near the mobile scroll point (see Figure
2). Users may expand the text to read the entire essay, but they can also immediately see the 197
thumbnails on the page.
The thumbnails are not scaled-down versions of the full image; instead, they are cropped
to show the most meaningful detail. If a mobile user wishes to see the full image and
metadata, he or she will click through to a standard CONTENTdm page that is not mobile
friendly, but our goal was to give the mobile user as much content as possible at the initial
point of need. Users can follow up later on a larger screen to view the full image and record.
When uploading a custom page to CONTENTdm, some adjustments are needed to
preserve the fluid layout. The standard head information is appended to the top of all custom
pages, including links to necessary JavaScript files and the CONTENTdm style sheet
(main.css). Some of the CONTENTdm styles are at odds with a fluid grid layout, so this
needs to be addressed in the custom page content. For instance, the body of every
CONTENTdm page is styled to have a minimum width of 960px. For our responsive pages
to adjust to the viewer’s screen width, this needs to be overridden. We were able to do this by
changing the minimum width of the body to 0 in one of our custom style sheets.
The search box also needs to be restyled to fit into the mobile view. We copied the
searchbox code from the standard collection view and pasted it into the appropriate spots on
our custom page. Then, we adjusted the problematic styles in main.css. First, we changed the
width of the search box from 370px to 150px for the smallest resolution group. We also
changed the margins and hid the advanced search option on mobile screens. In the media
query for mobile devices, these are the changes that we made:
• .search_content_box_noresults {width: 150px};
• #search_content {margin: 7px 0 0 10px};
• .search_content_container_advanced {display: none;}; and
• #search_content_close_icon {display: none}.

The cascading nature of CSS means that the last style read is the one that prevails. As long
as our stylesheets appear later in the html markup than the standard stylesheet (and they
do), they win the battle of competing styles.
Trials and Triumphs builds on the strengths of Shades of Gray and Blue, and offering
mobile access takes the goal of reaching a wide audience to a new level. Together with
sites such as the University of Nebraska’s Army Officers’ Wives on the Great Plains
(http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/army_officers_wives/), Trials and Triumphs offers a
model for combining substantial essays with visual and multimedia primary sources.

Southern Places
Southern Places, in some ways the Library’s most ambitious collaborative digitization
project, includes images and property histories from the CHP’s work in documenting and
preserving churches, schools, cemeteries, farms and other historic sites. This project arose
out of discussions between Walker Library Dean Bonnie Allen and CHP Director Carroll
OCLC Van West. While Allen pressed for more collaboration among the university’s libraries,
archives and research centers, West wanted to open up access to a rich collection that had
30,3 been essentially closed to the general public (Figure 3).
One particularly noteworthy sub-collection in Southern Places is the documentation
of rural African American churches in Tennessee. The CHP started the Tennessee Rural
African American Church Project in response to the church fires of the mid-1990s and
198 the recognition that there was a lack of awareness of the historical significance of these
properties. The project’s research files have grown to include ⬎ 500 churches located in
rural communities that date from 1850 to 1970. CHP Director West (2008) has written of
the central importance of these churches, together with schools, cemeteries and lodges,
in the formation and development of rural African American communities. The photos
and church histories in Southern Places will not only make further research much easier
for scholars, but should also rekindle interest in the churches among community
members across the state.
A Google-based interactive map has been an important addition to the Southern
Places site (see Figure 4). In addition to offering users a quick sense of the geographic
scope of the collection, the map links specific property locations to corresponding
property histories and photographs in the collection. The pins that indicate property
locations are color-coded by property type (e.g. churches). Even Tennesseans may be
surprised to see the number of these churches in East Tennessee, a region that is usually
seen as having a small African American population. Many digital collections would
benefit from this sort of snapshot of collection content. Dr West has noted the usefulness
of the map in introducing the site to colleagues and the general public.
We created this map using Google Fusion Tables. Although this application may sound
intimidating to some, the process of creating the maps is straightforward: create a
Fusion Tables account with Google; develop a spreadsheet with property names,
geographic coordinates, etc.; upload the spreadsheet to the Fusion Tables account; and

Figure 3.
The Southern Places
landing page features
links to preconfigured
subject searches
(cemeteries, farms, etc)
and a scrolling image
gallery
 Collaborative
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199

Figure 4.
The Southern Places
interactive map was
created using Google
Fusion Tables

embed the map into a custom CONTENTdm page. Becker (2012) offers more detail
about the process of creating these maps.
Southern Places is one of ten of our collections that include content about specific places
in Tennessee. We used the ViewShare software that is hosted by the Library of Congress to
create “Tennessee Places in Digital Collections”, which maps ⬎ 90 place names to relevant
content in our digital collections (http://digital.mtsu.edu/cdm/tennesseeplaces). We used
ViewShare instead of Fusion Tables because creating facets for place and county names,
which appear to the left of the map, was much easier to do in ViewShare.

Partnering with MTSU’s public history program: graduate assistants

MTSU’s graduate program in public history, which offers one of the eight PhD
programs available in the field, offers concentrations in historic preservation, cultural
resource management, museum management, archival management and oral history.
About 75 of the current students in MTSU’s history graduate program are following the
public history track.
Like other public history programs (Burg, 2012; Leon, 2012), MTSU’s program is
adjusting its courses and expanding its graduate assistantship opportunities to address
the increasingly digital environment in which its graduates will work. The Library has
played an important role in supporting this effort by providing students with experience
in developing digital collections. The Library, the public history program and the
graduate students all benefit from this partnership.
The Library has been fortunate in having ten public history students as graduate
assistants (GAs) (or interns) over the past six years. They are dedicated workers because
they have a natural interest in the content and an awareness that the skills that they
OCLC learn may help them land a job in their chosen specialty. Some of these students have
special skills (e.g. audio digitization, GIS) or specific research interests (e.g. Trail of
30,3 Tears) that we try to incorporate into their work. Three of our GAs have also previously
obtained graduate degrees in library and information studies.
These GAs are particularly valuable in their work with digital collections (e.g. Southern
Places) that include a historical notes field in each record. They often use their research skills
200 to find additional information about the history and/or location of a specific property, and
use their writing skills to convey the key facts about a property in a concise format. Although
this process significantly increases the time that is devoted to metadata entry, the detail in
the records increases the researcher’s understanding of the historic properties that are
represented in the collection. Figure 5 illustrates the value of this extra work.

Partnering with history faculty and classes

The Library is also playing a key role in a class project that will give graduate students
experience in digital history publishing. The Digital Initiatives team has worked on several
projects with Rebecca Conard, a Professor in MTSU’s public history program. Over the past
five years, Dr Conard’s graduate classes have been conducting research on African
American communities in Rutherford County, Tennessee. The Library has supported this
work by creating a metadata template in CONTENTdm, training graduate students in
working with metadata and developing the public interface for the collections.
The strength of this partnership made Dr Conard’s spring 2014 class an excellent
candidate for the “soft” rollout of the library’s Digital Scholarship Center (DSC), a space
that provides hardware, software and support for graduate students and faculty to
develop digital projects. This initial class is using the DSC to create a database and
online exhibit in Omeka that documents the formation and development of cemetery, an
African American community that developed after the Civil War and was displaced
with the creation of the Stones River National Battlefield Park in the 1920s and 1930s.
Library staff responsibilities thus far have included installing the Omeka open-source
software on MTSU’s virtual server, training a graduate student in the basics of working
with Omeka and serving as consultants for the project. Dr Conard directs this project,
and the Library plays a less significant role in terms of time than in our other digital
projects. However, we will be able to support a larger number of digital projects with this
model. We expect the use of the DSC to grow, as digital history becomes a larger
component of the public history program’s curriculum. Moreover, our goal is to extend
the reach of the DSC not only to the digital humanities, but also to our graduate students
and faculty in MTSU’s business and science programs.

Working with historians

Our experience with historians (and historians-to-be) in each of these projects has
convinced us of the tremendous value that they can add to collaborative digitization
programs that include content from LAMs. One reason for this success is their
ability to incorporate primary sources from each type of institution into compelling
historical narratives. Our public history faculty have also simplified the process of
finding digital project partners; they have built strong relationships with other
historians, LAM professionals, K-12 educators and citizens who are active in
preserving the heritage of their communities. The strength of this network of
 Collaborative
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201

Figure 5.
United Sons and
Daughters of Charity
Lodge Hall: front view.
The detail that the
graduate assistant has
provided in the historical
notes field conveys the
significance of this
seemingly ordinary
building

contacts has simplified the process of finding partners for such projects as Shades of
Gray and Blue and Trials and Triumphs.
Whereas many libraries have built excellent digital projects based on their own
collections and leave contextualizing the content to others, Walker Library has approached
its digital projects as an equal among multiple partners. This approach provides a model for
libraries that lack unique primary source content to play an important role in building
engaging digital collections with lasting value. This active role for Walker Library, when
combined with the mix of cultural heritage professionals on campus and their extensive
contacts, makes MTSU an excellent sandbox for collaboration among LAMs.
OCLC References
Becker, D. (2012), “Each item its own time and place: using google fusion tables and simile timeline
30,3 to map the ott historical photograph digital collection”, Microform & Digitization Review,
Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 24-33.
Bishoff, L. (2009), “Seven keys to sustainable digital collaboratives”, Texas Library Journal,
Vol. 85 No. 4, pp. 132-134.
202 Burg, S. (2012), “The future is here: public history education and the future of digital history”,
History@Work, available at: http://publichistorycommons.org/the-future-is-here-public-
history-education-and-the-rise-of-digital-history/
Leon, S. (2012), “Agile (digital) public history: preparing a new generation of cultural heritage
professionals”, Bracket, available at: www.6floors.org/bracket/2012/04/30/agile-digital-
public-history-preparing-a-new-generation-of-cultural-heritage-professionals/
National Council on Public History (2013), “What is public history?”, available at: http://ncph.org/
cms/what-is-public-history/
Rutner, J. and Schonfeld, R. (2012), Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians,
Ithaka S⫹R, New York, NY, available at: www.sr.ithaka.org/sites/default/files/reports/
supporting-the-changing-research-practices-of-historians.pdf
Tebeau, M. (2013), “Listening to the city: oral history and place in the digital era”, Oral History
Review, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 25-35.
West, C.V. (2008), “Sacred spaces of faith, community, and resistance: rural African American
churches in Jim Crow Tennessee”, in Nieves, A.D. and Alexander, L.M. (Eds), We Shall
Independent Be: African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the
United States, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, pp. 439-461.
Zorich, D.M., Waibel, G. and Erway, R. (2008), Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among
Libraries, Archives, and Museums, OCLC Research, Dublin, OH, available at:
www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2008/2008-05.pdf

Further reading
Craft, A.R., Carstens, T. and Woolf, J. (2010), “The craft revival project: library leadership in
creating connections between small cultural institutions”, in Ng, K.B. and Kucsma, J. (Eds),
Digitization in the Real World, Metropolitan New York Library Council, New York, NY,
pp. 503-517.

About the authors

Ken Middleton is Digital Initiatives Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University’s Walker
Library. He also serves as the Library’s liaison to MTSU’s History Department. Ken Middleton is
the corresponding author and can be contacted at: ken.middleton@mtsu.edu
Amy York is Web Services Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University. She is also the
editor of the journal Tennessee Libraries.

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