About the Toolkit
Public history organizations of all types and sizes — a local public library, a community genealogy group, a tribal language preservation program, an historic house museum, a county historical society — collect and preserve an incredible range of materials that reveal a multitude of stories from America’s past and present. Digital access to these materials has the power to enrich and connect people and communities in new and meaningful ways.
The Digital Readiness Toolkit equips public history practitioners — particularly those doing public history work in small, rural, or underrepresented communities, with few or no paid staff — with the foundational knowledge needed to support digital readiness in their institutions. We define digital readiness as having the skills, tools, and resources to provide online public access to archives and cultural heritage materials.
This toolkit does not replace the need for hiring professional archivists, curators, or collection managers, nor is it a substitute for comprehensive training in digital preservation. Rather, it provides an entry point to the topic and a shared framework for planning and benchmarking. It is a living document which will evolve in response to community input, changes in technology, and the availability of new resources.
Funding
This project was made possible in part by planning and implementation grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
© 2023 WiLS (Wisconsin Library Services, Inc.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
WiLS provides this Toolkit for free use, sharing, copying, distribution and adaptation with attribution.
Suggested citation:
Pfotenhauer, Emily, Vicki Tobias, and Kristen Whitson, eds. 2023. Digital Readiness Toolkit (2nd edition). Madison, WI: WiLS.
Originally published by WiLS in 2022.
Updated with significant contributions from the Community Archiving Workshop in 2023.
Please contact the Recollection Wisconsin project management team at with any questions or comments regarding this document.
Building a Digital Readiness Community of Practice in Wisconsin
In 2020-2021, staff and volunteers representing cultural heritage institutions across Wisconsin met regularly to identify priorities, plan events, and provide feedback on content created to support the digital readiness needs of Wisconsin’s public history practitioners. This Digital Readiness Community of Practice Launch Committee was central to the development of the Digital Readiness Levels and the Digital Readiness Toolkit.
Committee members:
- Chris Allen, Kenosha County Historical Society
- Ben Barbera, Milwaukee County Historical Society
- Bonnie Byrd, Waukesha County Historical Society
- Michelle Gobert, Forest County Historical and Genealogical Society
- Jennifer Gurske, Madison Trust for Historic Preservation
- Joe Hermolin, Langlade County Historical Society
- Cheryl Kern-Simirenko, Stanley Area Historical Society
- Janean Mollet-Van Beckum, History Center of Washington County
- Tammy Schutz, Barron County Historical Society/Pioneer Village Museum
- Katie Stilp, Appleton Public Library
- Robin Untz, Lake Mills-Aztalan Historical Society
Committee advisors and coordinators:
- Kristen Leffelman, Wisconsin Historical Society
- Janet Seymour, Wisconsin Historical Society
- Vicki Tobias, WiLS
- Kristen Whitson, WiLS
Assessing and Addressing Digital Readiness for Audiovisual Collections
In 2022-2023, WiLS partnered with the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW), to update and enhance the Toolkit. CAW, a program of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to support the project Assessing and Addressing Digital Readiness for Audiovisual Collections.
This work built on the Digital Readiness Toolkit developed by WiLS, Recollection Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, adapting it to incorporate the unique needs of audiovisual collections.
A new self-assessment survey and related documentation were piloted with twelve CAW partner organizations in four regions: the Midwest, the Southeast, the Southwest, and California. The project also supported a partner-driven Community of Practice – a space in which organizations support and learn from each other in order to become better stewards of their collections. The self-assessment survey and other audiovisual resources in this edition of the Toolkit were contributed by Community Archiving Workshop members:
- Kelli Hix
- Marie Lascu
- Amy Sloper
- Moriah Ulinskas
- Pamela Vadakan
- Sandra Yates
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the staff of the Office of Programs and Outreach at the Wisconsin Historical Society, including Janet Seymour, Kristen Leffelman, Liz Arbuckle, and Amy Norlin, for their roles in content development, promotion, and as liaisons to the Wisconsin Council for Local History.
Much gratitude goes to the many experts who provided feedback on drafts of the Digital Readiness Levels, Digital Project Planning Worksheet, and Toolkit as they evolved:
- Sarah Mueller, Carthage College
- Judy Jones, Judge Eghart House
- Theresa Hebert, The Highground Veterans Memorial Park
- Maryanne O’Dowd, Sister Bay Liberty Grove Fire Department Oral History Project
- Sarah Lundquist, WiLS/Curating Indigenous Digital Collections
Thank you to Bronwen Masemann, Masemann Research Services, for contributing to the sections of this Toolkit focused on audiovisual resources and for providing overall feedback. These contributions were made possible thanks to a grant to the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW), a project of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS RE-85-18-0039-18).
The twelve CAW partner organizations who piloted the self- assessment survey and provided feedback for the audiovisual specific resources needs are:
- African American Library and Museum at Oakland
- Audiovisual Heritage Center (AVHC), Nashville Metro Archives
- Fisk University
- History Museum at the Castle, Appleton, WI
- Huhugam Heritage Center-Gila River Indian Community
- Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Library & Archives
- Karuk Tribal Libraries
- Sacramento Public Library
- University of Texas at El Paso Library
- University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Archives and Special Collections
- University of Wisconsin-Madison University Archives
- Wyandotte Nation
The Digital Readiness Toolkit and related resources build on and borrow from several foundational resources that make digitization and digital preservation best practices accessible to libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies of all sizes.
We are grateful to the following programs and initiatives for their leadership in this area:
- Sustainable Heritage Network, Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, Washington State University
- National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
- Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources (Digital POWRR) Project
- Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations (STEPS), American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)
- Digital Collections Stewardship series of courses, OCLC / WebJunction
This project was made possible by grants to WiLS (Wisconsin Library Services) from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the granting arm of the National Archives and Records Administration:
- Planning a Community of Practice for Digital Readiness in Wisconsin, NHPRC Archives Collaboratives Planning Grant RJ-102848, 2019
- Building a Statewide Digital Readiness Community of Practice, NHPRC Archives Collaboratives Implementation Grant RJ-103067, 2021
- Assessing and Addressing Digital Readiness in Audiovisual Collections, NHPRC Archives Collaboratives Implementation Grant
