Digitizing the Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds Project: Sometimes it Takes a Village

Date
2024-05-29
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Abstract
The University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections houses the Winnifred Eaton Reeve archive, a popular collection for literary researchers investigating Winnifred Eaton Reeve, a pivotal early Chinese North American fiction-writer who assumed the Japanese persona “Onoto Watanna.” Winnifred Eaton Reeve (1875-1954) was a successful novelist in North America as well as a Hollywood editor, story and screenplay writer. This collection stands as the second most frequently consulted fonds in our literary archives. The inherent fragility of the artifacts mandated extreme caution during every interaction, underscoring the need for digitization to safeguard and enhance accessibility for present and future Winnifred Eaton Reeve enthusiasts. The rising demand for digital access from external academic researchers became the catalyst for a full-scale digitization project. This project was unique not only as it encompassed digitizing the entire collection but because a cross-departmental team was created to handle the project. The presenters will discuss how the complexities of a team approach for the digitization project – from retrieval, description, and handling of fragile materials to addressing metadata mapping, sensitive content, and navigating changes in the Canadian copyright act, substantially updating the finding aid and creating an online research guide drew upon a wide-range of information experts from across the library system. Insights from our first endeavor in digitizing an entire archival collection will be shared, offering lessons learned and future directions.
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Keywords
Digitization, Project management, Archives, Collaboration, Winnifred Eaton Reeve
Citation
McKillop, C., Nisenson, J., & Ruddock, K. (2024, May 29-30). Digitizing the Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds Project: Sometimes it Takes a Village [Conference presentation]. 2024 AABC/ARMA VI, Victoria, BC, Canada.