Western Libraries Digitized Collections

Projects

The University of Western Ontario Presidents Reports

The University of Western Ontario Reports of the President (1928/29-1977/78,1980/81-1990/92,1994) was digitized by John Critchley, Arielle Vanderschans and Rebecca Power.  The project was supervised by Leanne Olson. The material was digitized using the Atiz Bookdrive Mark II scanner, with dual Canon EOS 5D Mark IV DSLR cameras. The material was edited using Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Acrobat. For more information about the digitization process, please contact Western Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections.

The Barnett Legacy Project

The Barnett Legacy Project digital collection was designed and created by Rebecca Power, a student in the Master of Library and Information Science program at Western University, as the focus of her co-op position with Archives and Special Collections in the fall of 2019. Rebecca was supervised by Leanne Olson (Digitization and Digital Preservation Librarian) and Debbie Meert-Williston (Special Collections Librarian). The material was digitized by Rebecca using the Atiz Bookdrive Mark II scanner, with dual Canon EOS 5D Mark IV DSLR cameras. The material was edited using Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Acrobat. For more information about the digitization process or the Barnett Legacy Project, please contact Western Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections.

The project was developed as part of a campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary of J.D. Barnett’s original donation of 40,000 volumes to the University of Western Ontario in 1918. We plan to continue adding to this collection, with the goal to extend Barnett’s legacy and further his dream of these books being available to ”any earnest seeker of knowledge.”

Any major project like this involves staff from across the library system, and we would also like to acknowledge the contributions of:

• Julie Ryan (Development Officer) for spearheading the fundraising efforts for this project, with the input of Robin Keirstead (University Archivist), Leanne Olson (Digitization and Digital Preservation Librarian) and Debbie Meert-Williston (Special Collections Librarian)
• Jessica Van Keulen (Metadata Specialist) for providing metadata for the print and digitized volumes, under the supervision of Christina Zoricic (Head, Discovery, Description, and Metadata)
• Magnus Berg (Casual Assistant Student) for providing advice and troubleshooting for the cameras and editing software
• Connie Sutherland (Archives Assistant) for editing and proofreading assistance
• John Silvester (Library Systems Administrator) for administering the Western Libraries Omeka platform and Ron Lillicrop (Workstation Support Specialist) for software support

Digitizers:

Rebecca Power: MLIS co-op student from September to December 2019; Digitization Assistant from September 2021 to present. Created this online exhibit to house digitized collections.  Worked on the Barnett Legacy Digitization Project, and the digitization of the University of Western Records.