The 2018 Upper Midwest Digital Collections Conference (#UMDCC18) will be held on November 8-9th at St. Catherine University campus, St. Paul, Minnesota. The UMDCC provides opportunities for digital collections creators and curators in the region and beyond to network, share best practices, participate in hands-on workshops, and learn from leaders in digital cultural heritage.
Our presentations will explore two recent efforts by archives and special collections organizations to engage artists to create new work using our collections, including our digital collections. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee created the Look Here! project as an avenue to work with fourteen area artists to learn more about how they use archives and digital collections, and to encourage artists and others to engage our digital collections – where we currently have over 140,000 objects freely available – to create new work. The Look Here! project culminates in an exhibit at a local museum in summer 2018 and demonstrates not only how we can work with artists to reach broader audiences, but the power of partnerships with multiple communities to enable this work.
University of Minnesota Libraries used an innovation award to fund an artist in residence program. Three artists were selected for a semester-long residency to work collaboratively with the Libraries’ special collections curators, digital content staff and subject librarians. The artists engaged in open-ended, exploratory projects that were informed or inspired by materials (both physical and digital) in Libraries’ collections, including Archives and Special Collections. The residency goals were to inspire art with historical documents and other sources; build collaboration between artists, archives, and libraries; support artists interested in exploring historical documents; and bring both art and archives to new audiences.
