Museum among first to link objects to library catalog

Submitted by Kerynn Fisher
Phone: (907) 474-6941
07/29/04

When it comes to home computers and Internet use, Alaskans are among the most wired in the country. It should come as no surprise, then, that an Alaska museum is one of the first in the nation to integrate objects from its collections into an online library catalog. Last week, the University of Alaska Museum of the North did just that--adding 53 objects from its collections into Alaska’s Virtual Library and Digital Archive (ViLDA), a collaborative project hosted by UAF’s Rasmuson Library.

"For years, we’ve been working to make our collections more accessible using the Internet," says museum education coordinator Terry Dickey, "and ViLDA gives us the perfect infrastructure to do it."

This first group of museum objects incorporated into the digital archives includes oil paintings, watercolors and photographs from the fine arts collection; ivory carvings, dolls and clothing from the ethnology collection; and multimedia resources such interviews with artists and video of Alaska’s landscapes from the education collection. Ultimately, the museum hopes to incorporate approximately 3,000 objects into ViLDA.

The museum objects join maps, oral histories, photographs and other historical documents from the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections, the archives at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Seward Community Library Association and the libraries at the University of Alaska Anchorage and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Visitors to the online archives, located online at http://vilda.alaska.edu, can either browse the collections of an individual institution or search for objects that meet any combination of criteria, including author/artist/creator, date created, location/region, subject keywords and type of work.

Over the next several months, museum staff will work with partners from Alaska’s Yukon-Koyukuk and Delta-Greely school districts to develop the format and content for educational Discovery Tours of the digital archives. These tours will serve as tools for teachers wanting to use museum and library resources to enhance their classroom lessons. In addition, museum staff hope to work with other Alaska museums and cultural centers to integrate their collections into ViLDA.

The museum’s work to integrate its collections into ViLDA is funded by grants from the US Department of Commerce Technology Opportunities Program and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Contact: Kerynn Fisher, Communications Coordinator, University of Alaska Museum of the North, at (907) 474-6941, (907) 378-2559 or k.fisher@uaf.edu.