Audiences for Pennsylvania’s

digital collections

MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TEACHERS—

Students and teachers will be able to use unique, rare resources that cannot be accessed otherwise except at the institution holding them. In so doing, they will meet Pennsylvania standards for history that call for students to develop the skills of explaining, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and evaluating many types of historical sources.

LOCAL AND FAMILY HISTORIANS—

Nationwide, some 35 million people use the Internet for family history research, and Pennsylvania libraries and archives report significant use of their collections for this purpose. Increased digitization of historical materials will aid a growing audience interested in connecting with personal and community histories.

COLLEGE STUDENTS—

Nationally, Pennsylvania ranks fifth in higher education enrollment and third in the number of higher education institutions. Having access to a wealth of documents and other historical sources online will encourage college students to be more ambitious in undertaking their class assignments and will provide them with a wider array of research resources.

SCHOLARS AND RESEARCHERS—

This audience, numbering thousands, uses Pennsylvania’s historical collections and extends awareness of them by teaching, publishing, and making presentations. A large selection of digitized Pennsylvania materials available on the Web will call attention to the key role the Commonwealth has played in many histories, which, in turn, will allow Pennsylvanians to gain a richer sense of the Commonwealth’s heritage.

HERITAGE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT—

Heritage tourism has proven to be a significant economic driver in Pennsylvania. Digitized collections serve the heritage tourism sector in two ways: by providing the raw materials from which tourism professionals develop public programming and by providing history travelers with additional reasons to visit or to extend their stays.

FUNDERS—

The purpose of this project was to identify and prioritize subject areas and materials for digitization and link them to the needs of diverse user communities. With this information at their disposal, both funding agencies and cultural heritage institutions will be better able to plan and set digitization priorities.

What do you think? Are these the audiences for digitization?

Recommended priorities for digitization—topics1ST TIER PRIORITIES—

* The environment and land use

* Population groups from 1850 to the present

* Transportation and industry

* Major 19th-and 20th-century conflicts—and the communities of conscience that have reacted to war, injustice, and intolerance

2ND TIER PRIORITIES—

* The economy— From the 1600s to today, important economic and labor trends, including agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing

* Politics and government— From the first elections held in the Commonwealth to current local, state, and national elections, materials that provide insight into how Pennsylvanians govern themselves and their relationships with other states and nations

* Culture— From built spaces to fine arts to pop culture, especially in the 20th century, Pennsylvanians as cultural trendsetters

* Technology, science, and medicine— Especially from 1850 on, technology, innovation, and invention in Pennsylvania and its importance to the nation and the world

* Society— Race, gender, Native American populations, religion and social justice, slavery and the Underground Railroad, and their place in determining the course of Pennsylvania history, along with the effect of battles and wars on the people of Pennsylvania, from the earliest settlers to the present Recommended

priorities for digitization—materials

AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS

Especially historical sound and moving image resources

VITAL RECORDS

Including birth, death, and land records

Do you agree? Should these be the priorities for digitization?