Digitize your family heirlooms and community artifacts at Community Awareness Day on March 22nd with the help of the Mobile Memory Lab!
For one day only, catalogers from the Mobile Memory Lab, a service of Illinois Heartland Library System, will carefully photograph or scan family heirlooms and community artifacts, learn about the items, and catalog them for inclusion in the Illinois Digital Archive. You’ll get access to the digital images and help preserve valuable pieces of history for generations to come.
What’s the Mobile Memory Lab All About?
The Mobile Memory Lab is seeking community members with historical documents, photographs, realia (3D objects), or other collections and who are interested in helping preserve history and sharing their family and community legacies by contributing to the Illinois Digital Archive, the gateway to Illinois history. The Archive’s digitized exhibits are available online for all to view at no cost as a service from the Illinois State Library and the Office of the Illinois Secretary of State, making this a valuable resource for historians, genealogists, and students.
During Community Awareness Day, Mobile Memory Lab staff will bring equipment to the event and meet with community members during 30-minute appointments. Mobile Memory Lab staff will scan and photograph your keepsakes while you wait, collect information about the items, and return them to you at the end of the appointment. In the weeks that follow, Mobile Memory Lab staff will expertly catalog your collection and upload the digitizations to the Illinois Digital Archive, preserving valuable pieces of history.
This service is made possible through financial support from Illinois Humanities, a statewide nonprofit organization that activates the humanities through free public programs, grants, and educational opportunities, and by Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS), which runs the Mobile Memory Lab. IHLS is one of three regional library systems in Illinois and is a support partner to the libraries of southern and central Illinois, including ours. IHLS provides our interlibrary loan delivery service, access to digital collections and the SHARE automation consortium, continuing education for our library staff, discounts and group purchases, access to state grants, and more. As an IHLS-member library, we lean on IHLS to help us provide a quality library services, like the Mobile Memory Lab, to our patrons.
Are you ready to share your legacy and your memories?
STEP 1: Reserve a 30-minute timeslot at the library to meet with staff from the Mobile Memory Lab on the upcoming Community Awareness Day. All appointments must take place in person, at the event, and during Community Awareness Day hours. Mobile Memory Lab Community Awareness Day appointments are limited and must be reserved in advance. Please contact mtreece@dupo196.org at least 48 hours in advance (or as soon as possible) should you need to cancel your appointment.
STEP 2: Look around for items which you and your family members would like to preserve or which you believe would be a valuable contribution to this public historical collection. This may include:
Personal photographs
Slides (35 mm mounted slides, 4 frames; 35 mm film strips, 12 frames; and 6 cm x 22 cm medium-format strips, 2 frames.)
Manuscripts and letters
Federal government documents
Postcards
Newspaper clippings published prior to 1978
Maps
Historical items (realia)
Flat items (such as documents and photographs) must be 8.5x11.7 inches or smaller to be scanned. Three-dimensional objects should be no more than 12 inches in height, width, or depth in order to be photographed.
We recommend bringing no more than 10-15 items to be digitized per appointment.
All items must include the copyright holder’s permission for inclusion. See “Copyright Notices” below.
STEP 3: When you arrive for your Mobile Memory Lab appointment, you will be asked to complete a short online form with your contact information and to sign a release to share the digitized documents and photos. Unfortunately, we cannot accept any items with a copyright held by another person or entity, such as previously published books, poems, and newspaper articles published 1978 to the present.
STEP 4: Watch as Mobile Memory Lab staff carefully scan and photograph your items. Please do not leave the event. Your items will be returned to you during your appointment.
STEP 5: Following this event, the digitized files will be cataloged and submitted to the Illinois Digital Archive by the Mobile Memory Lab.
STEP 6: Watch the Illinois Digital Archive for your digitized collection to be published! Please be patient, as depending on the number of digital files to be cataloged and posted, it may take several months for your collection to be published live on the Illinois Digital Archive website. Meanwhile, you’ll also be able to explore the historical collections shared by others.
Copyright Notices
Regarding Copyright of Eligible Items
Items eligible for digitization and inclusion in the Illinois Digital Archives include historical documents, photographs, and 3D items (realia) which do not violate US copyright law. All items must include acknowledgement that the Community Digitization Day participant is the owner and copyright holder for the items to be captured. Items owned and published by another entity, such as a publishing house or newspaper, are not eligible for inclusion unless the work has entered into the public domain.
Examples of items eligible for digitized by the Mobile Memory Lab:
· Personal photographs in print or slide form
· Manuscripts and letters
· Federal government documents
· Postcards
· Newspaper clippings published prior to 1978
· Historical items (realia)
· Personal art
Examples of items that are not eligible for digitization by the Mobile Memory Lab:
· Previously published books and poems
· Newspaper articles published 1978 to the present
· Photographs where the copyright is held by a photography studio
· Art sold by artists or photographs thereof
Grant of Non-Exclusive License to Digitize and Publish
The Mobile Memory Lab, an Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS) project, is scanning items to document Illinois history. If you would like to have us scan and share digital copies of your items, you must grant IHLS, on behalf of the Mobile Memory Lab, a non-exclusive license to make digital reproductions of the property, to share these digital reproductions with the public through the Illinois Digital Archives and Illinois Digital Heritage Hub, and to use the images for IHLS business purposes, including but not limited to promoting Mobile Memory Lab services. In granting a non-exclusive license, you do not to surrender your intellectual rights to these items but agree to allow them to be used to promote scholarship by providing electronic copies for personal study and not-for-profit/educational uses.