Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
The Project
The University Library at Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is an urban academic library rooted in
community collaboration and has developed working relationships with over
thirty-five organizations to provide worldwide access to over eighty digital
collections.[1]
One particular collaborative project undertaken by the IUPUI University Library
Center for Digital Scholarship was the digitization of the of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s (IMS) vast historic
photographic collection which contains over four million negative slides, taken
from 1879 to 1997.[2]
This project was funded by grants from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library
Services and administered by the Indiana State Library.[3]
The partnership between IUPUI and IMS began in 2010 with one
simple original goal: “to digitize large portions of the expansive photographic
racing history contained within IMS’ negative collection, and by doing so,
provide access to the masses.”[4]
According to the case study published in 2015, IUPUI University Library was
first contacted by IMS to discuss the preservation needs of their collection as
well as to begin the discussion about creating a historic digital collection of
a select group of photographs.[5]
IUPUI and IMS’s successful collaboration of the
digitization of the collection of negatives later resulted in the partnership
securing funding to create digital stories that included original audio clips
for every year of the race.[6]
“The hope of both the Center for Digital Scholarship at IUPUI University
Library and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is that, through this audio and
visual combination, users will be able to easily imagine themselves at the
track on race day for any given year.”[7]
And so, in the spring of 2013 the partnership began the process of interviewing
IMS’s track historian, and by combing these recordings with the recordings of
the races and post-race commentary, one hundred audio recordings summarizing
each year’s race will be created.[8]
By 2014, 66 audio histories were made available alongside the photographs in
the digital repository.[9]
Challenges & Lessons Learned
The case study discussing IUPUI’s Center for Digital
Scholarship and this particular collaboration with IMS emphasizes that while
all digitization projects involve outreach, digitization, image manipulation,
metadata creation, and content management system implementation, each
individual project is unique and customizing the digitization plan and workflow
to the needs of the organization is essential.[10]
In order to complete the digitization of the collection
of negatives IUPUI had to work around the needs of their partnering
institution. One of the main challenges the partnering institutions faced was
where to physically carryout the digitization process as the collection of
negatives resides at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and the museum
prohibits the removal of negatives from the premise. This meant that IUPUI must provide a mobile
digitization service, and so a temporary, on-site digitization station was
built to facilitate the digitization of the negatives. “Negatives were
digitized, manipulated, and described at the museum. Once a large number of
images were completed, the images were transferred to an external hard-drive
and taken back to the library. Images and metadata were uploaded into CONTENTdm
to provide online access to the collection.”[11]
While the concept of having to provide a mobile
digitization service and perform the actual digitization of each negative and
describe them off-site was an initial concern for IUPUI, in the end the
arrangement provided unforeseen benefits to workflow processes and tasks. The
off-site process allowed the IUPUI Library staff members to interact directly with
the IMS staff on a daily basis which facilitated the creation of the rich
metadata that was simultaneously created as the negatives were being digitized;
an outcome that could not have been accomplished on-site at the university’s library.[12]
It was because of the expertise from both organizations working seamlessly
together that contributed to a digital collection with rich metadata and
supporting historical documentation.
Conclusions
In the case study of IUPUI’s collaboration with IMS the
author makes a very good point about collaborative projects and stresses that
the focus of these sorts of projects should be on the relationship, or “collaboration”,
between the partnering institutions. It states, “While the library provides technological
support (both in terms of equipment and expertise) to community organizations,
the key to building successful digital collections is less about the technology
and more about developing a relationship with that organization. It is about
understanding the needs of the organization and determining desired outcomes
for the project. By creating flexible workflows and processes, the goal of creating
a successful digital collection that all partners value can be met.”[13]
According to a 2013 blogpost by IUPUI’s Center for Digital
Scholarship, just after the two partnering institutions began digitizing oral
histories and adding them to IUPUI’s digital repository, that despite the
challenges faced during the digitization of the collection of negatives, “the
partnership was successful, and thousands of previously unavailable images
depicting the vast racing history of the IMS can now be viewed by not only
employees of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but race fans and scholars all
over the world.”[14]
While grant funding has expired, the collaboration between IUPUI and IMS still
continues with IUPUI University Library responsible for sustaining and
preserving the digital collection and IMS supporting the addition of new
material. Today, the collection is still readily available and actively updated
as new materials are digitized and ingested into IUPUI’s digital repository. The
IMS collection is made accessible through IUPUI’s library web portal and is
regularly updated; the last update is stamped January 28, 2016.[15]
With these facts in mind, it is clear that the
collaboration between the University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship
at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway was a success. More specifically, because not only is the digital
collection still up and running and made easily accessible to the public, but because
the collection is constantly growing and regularly updated with new material
and metadata. While the original project between the partnership has been
completed, the collaboration between IUPUI and IMS remains intact and continues
to be a success.
Access the
Indianapolis Speedway Collection Here
[1] Jennifer
Johnson, “Creating Digital Cultural Heritage Collections in an Urban Academic
Library Setting,” Urban Library Journal
21, no. 1 (January 2015):1-2.
[2] Johnson,
8.
[3] “Indianapolis
Motor Speedway and IUPUI library bring racing history to life online.”
[4] “Race
Back in Time: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection Adds Oral Histories,”
November 20, 2013, http://www2.ulib.iupui.edu/node/31545.
[5] Johnson,
8.
[6] Ibid,
11.
[7] “Race
Back in Time: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection Adds Oral Histories.”
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Indianapolis
Motor Speedway and IUPUI bring racing history to life online.” May 19, 2014, http://news.iupui.edu/releases/2014/05/speedway-audio-stories.shtml.
[10]
Johnson, 2.
[11] Ibid,
9.
[12] Ibid,
10.
[13] Ibid,
11.
[14] “Race
Back in Time: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection Adds Oral Histories.”
[15] “Indianapolis
Motor Speedway Collection.” Last Modified January
28, 2016. http://ulib.iupui.edu/collections/IMS.
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