by Emily Magagnosc
Sara Davis is the Digital Project Manager for the Olmsted Archives at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. As the Site is part of the National Park Service, outreach and public programming is essential and involves everyone at the Site. Park Rangers provide visitor services, including tours, walks and lectures, and working with public schools, supported by archives staff. The archives and museum staff primarily interact with the public through reference inquiries, but they collaborate with interpretation staff on social media efforts and special programming. In the archives, Sara is working to design and develop a comprehensive digitization program that is sustainable long-term focusing on the plans and drawings collection, the most frequently used collection.
This digitization project involves many aspects of archival work. “On an average day, I identify and select items that are a top priority to be digitized, verify locations, create optimized digital images of plans, embed and confirm accuracy of metadata, generate access copies and place master files in long-term storage, and ensure they are uploaded online for access.”
In terms of outreach, she says good outreach involves community engagement, and her daily work at the Olmsted Site facilitates that. “The large-format scanner I use for digitization is located along the museum tour route,” she says. “So I may be physically handling and scanning the collection while a tour is in progress and will speak to the tour groups if they are interested.” Additionally, the digital images she produces are made available for access on the Site’s Flickr page and promoted on Facebook.
The Olmsted outreach efforts include the National Parks community as well. The Site is only one of over 400 National Parks and Sara and her colleagues regularly collaborate with parks and other institutions across the nation on projects.
Sara says her path to finding a career as an archivist has been long and winding. She tried out a number of paths, but none of them kept her interest for very long. But, after thinking about her life experiences, the commonality was that she found enjoyment in assisting others, especially regarding passing on information that would help them succeed. This led her to the Archives Management Program at Simmons. She graduated in January 2016.
She cites the work of her cousin, Gabriel Lopez and his wife, Jodi Lopez, in sparking her interest in archives. They had been using the archives at the University of Northern Colorado to research a historic neighborhood in Greeley, Colorado, known as the Spanish Colonies where Sara’s family has roots. Sara says that the family connection inspired her to pursue archival work because she wanted to ensure that everyone is included in the narrative of the nation’s cultural heritage and equal access to historical documentation.
This inspiration informs the work Sara does at the Olmsted Site. “My favorite part [of the digitization project] is that I am able to provide access to collections to the serious scholar and the casual browser,” she says. “These plans document places. People can go out into the actual place and see the changes over time by comparing it to the historical materials.”
While she cautions that digitization may deter people from visiting the physical archives and engaging in person with others, the benefits of digitization include an increase in discoverability and access. And, perhaps most importantly, with digitization digital outreach and advocacy efforts can be made world-wide.