Institutional Involvement
We are actively seeking participation in Volunteer Voices from libraries, museums, historical agencies, archival repositories and other cultural heritage institutions. We are eager to talk to your institution about becoming a contributing member of the Volunteer Voices digital library. Please contact the Project Manager or your regional Digitization and Content Specialist for more information about the project.
Tiffani Conner, Project Manager, tconner2@utk.edu
Alison Bentley, East TN Digitization and Content Specialist, abentle1@utk.edu
Genny Carter, Middle TN Digitization and Content Specialist, genny.carter@state.tn.us
Andy Carter, West TN Digitization and Content Specialist, acarte20@utk.edu
Project Phone: (865) 974-8757, Fax: (865) 974-9947
How we can help your institution?
There are a variety of options for participation in Volunteer Voices. Our staff will be providing opportunities across the state for training on digitization and metadata. We also will be setting up “digitization blitzes” at various venues such as TLA (April 19-20, Chattanooga) for regional work. We also have 3 dedicated staff members traveling across the state to work with institutions on site. We have equipment that institutions may borrow or we can do the work for you (through fall 2007).
Digitization and Metadata Training Workshops
We will be holding several training workshops across the state to teach librarians, archivists, curators, and others interested in digital collection creation. These workshops are specifically for those working on creation of digital content and metadata. Each workshop can host a maximum of 20 participants to allow for hands-on training.
Digitization Blitzes
Our first digitization blitz will be held in conjunction with the TLA Conference in Chattanooga on April 19-20. We will set up our equipment in the Exhibits hall and offer a variety of short training events as well as individual instruction and hands-on work. Feel free to bring some of your institutions collections to TLA and let us show you how we are building the state’s digital library collection.
Volunteer Voices staff come to you
Our Digitization and Content Specialists are traveling across the state to find rich cultural heritage materials to include in Volunteer Voices. We have equipment that we can bring or we can use your equipment. Our DCS’s will work with you to select, scan, and create metadata for your content and can train your staff at the same time.Online, accessible tools and equipment borrowing
For those receiving training and those wishing to contribute content to Volunteer Voices we have created online tools allowing you to create your own metadata. We have equipment on which you can save your files and send them to Volunteer Voices for inclusion.
What we are looking for?
Historical documents such as letters, diaries, photographs, legal documents, musical scores, paintings, prints and other visual art. Some historical themes that we are especially interested in include:
- Frontier migration, representative democracy, Native Americans
- Jacksonian democracy, Tennessee’s role in the early republic
- Anti-democractic impulses: Slavery, African-Americans, the removal of Native Americans
- Debate over slavery, Secession and the Civil War, Tennessee as a border state
- Reconstruction, the lives of freedmen, the establishment of sharecropping
- Taxation and the narrowing of the franchise through “Jim Crow” laws and poll taxes
- Utopian impulses of the 19th century such as Nashoba, Ruskin, and Rugby
- New South period and the industrialization of Tennessee
- Women’s Suffrage and Tennessee’s pivotal role in passage of the 19th amendment
- Machine politics and Prohibition
- Scopes trial, rise of fundamentalism and public education
- Tennessee Valley Authority and “grassroots democracy”
- Oak Ridge and the WWII effort in Tennessee
- Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee
- Modern Times in Tennessee