Assistant Librarian of Access & Technical Services and IU East Archivist Beth South presented at the 200 Festival Collections Showcase in Bloomington, IN on September 27, 2019. The showcase aimed to show how IU students, staff and faculty are using technology to enhance preservation, conservation, and use of collections and to develop new collections for public engagement.

Beth showcased the IU East LGBTQ+ Archive Collection, a new student-created collection which uses the IU Pressbooks platform. The e-book platform allows the collection to be easily accessible to the public, with chapters denoting different themes, focusing on people, places, or events and it can be easily searched for those wanting to find content related to gay marriage, drag shows, asexuality, and more. Beth was able to speak to students, staff, and faculty from the Bloomington campus about this growing collection and the versatility of using open-source e-publishing platforms to show off archival collections and to make them more accessible to the public. The IU East LGBTQ+ Archive is available to the public online at https://iu.pressbooks.pub/eastlgbtqarchive/.

There were many other collections and departments present at the showcase, including:

IU Kokomo Archive’s digitized photo collection, celebrating its 75 year history. https://iuk.libguides.com/archives

The William and Gayle Cook Music Library’s audio/video archive of live performances from the Jacob School of Music as well as the pedagogical tools they’ve created to enhance teaching and learning while interacting with the digitized audio and videos. https://libraries.indiana.edu/music-library

The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, one of the larger single-author archives in the country, recently had IUPUI’s Center for Digital Scholarship digitize some of the most prominent and well-known artifacts from Bradbury’s collection and these historical objects can then be accessed and handled remotely through a virtual reality environment. https://bradbury.iupui.edu/top-level-menu-folder/about.php

The Black Film Center/Archive’s Phil Moore Collection, showcasing the works of pianist and composer Phil Moore, the first Black musician salaried by a major Hollywood studio. http://www.indiana.edu/~bfca/home/

The Indiana Geological and Water Survey demonstrated their newly accessible collections through 3-D digitization, virtual reality, and digital exhibits, a highlight being their 3-D printed fossils and touchscreen digital exhibit of IU’s lost Megalonyx jeffersonii skeleton, a prehistoric sloth whose bones were once housed at IU, but tossed out in order to make room for IU’s growing student population. https://igws.indiana.edu/newsletter/read/april-2019-issue

The Media Digitization and Preservation Unit (MDPI) had the largest set up, being the driving force behind digitizing almost all of IU’s audio and video collections, including collections from the regionals like IU East. A highlight of their presentation was showcasing the phonograph wax cylinders held at the Archives of Traditional Music and explaining how they digitize such historic technology. https://mdpi.iu.edu/

The Bicentennial Traveling Interactive Exhibit was also officially dedicated and open to visitors. The exhibit features content from each campus in various mediums, including virtual reality, 3D prints, physical objects from IU’s collections, videos, and historic images. It will be traveling to all of Indiana’s 92 counties during the bicentennial year, so be on the lookout as it may soon show up somewhere near you.

IU has a wealth of collections from all areas and many of these collections are being made available online and publicly accessible. If you’re interested in any of these collections or in locating others and you’re not sure who to reach out to, you can contact IU East Archivist Beth South at eabrockm@iue.edu.