Cultural Heritage Services

Libraries, archives, and museums play a crucial role in helping their local populations discover and preserve the documentary heritage of their communities.  CLRC’s Cultural Heritage Services program works to help its members realize their full capacity to collect, preserve, and disseminate information about their unique cultural materials and records of enduring value.

Community Building

CLRC supports a number of “communities of practice” including the College and University Archivists Roundtable (regional) and the Special Collections Roundtable of Upstate New York.  Roundtables generally meet on a semi-annual basis and provide an opportunity for members to visit peer institutions, exchange ideas, and encourage collaboration.

Cultural Heritage Services also support the activities of CLRC’s Digitization Special Interest Group (DIG-SIG) which is made up of New York Heritage users and other digitization experts and practitioners from around the region.

If you have an idea for a roundtable or special interest group that you would like to form in support of cultural heritage activities, let us know and we can provide logistical support.

Continuing Education

As part of CLRC’s comprehensive continuing education calendar, CLRC’s Cultural Heritage Services works to bring CLRC members the latest knowledge in areas related to library, archive, and museum cultural heritage practice.  Events include online classes and workshops and in-person classes and workshops in areas including, but not limited to: archival processing, preservation practices, oral histories, digital curation, exhibits, and more.  If you have talents or learned experiences you would like to share, or a class or workshop (in-person or online) you would like to see offered, please contact us.

Site Visits and Advisory Services

CLRC offers digitization and collection management expertise, evaluation of members’ collections for digitization, as well as basic archival processing and preservation advice to its members.  Cultural heritage organizations are also encouraged to take advantage of services offered by the Documentary Heritage & Preservation Services program (DHPSNY).  A statewide program that provides free planning and education services to support the vast network of collecting institutions such as archives, libraries, historical societies, museums, and other organizations that safeguard and ensure access to New York’s historical records and library research materials.

Digital Services

CLRC and its partners at the Empire State Library Network (ESLN) to offer its members access to these projects.  Please get in touch with us for more information.

New York Heritage Digital Collections

CLRC works with its partners at the Empire State Library Network (ESLN) to offer its members access to New York Heritage Digital Collections via the CONTENTdm platform.  It is a statewide digital collections repository with historical photos, newsletters, maps, letters, registers, artwork, oral history interviews, videos, and more contributed by hundreds of organizations around New York State.  These collections feature a broad range of materials that present a glimpse into our state’s history and culture from libraries, archives, museums, and cultural organizations.  Creating digital access to cultural heritage objects on public platforms enhances the research value of such collections and heightens the contributor’s presence in the community.

CLRC assists potential contributors in the following ways:

• provide startup support – giving contributors tools and access instructions for participating in New York Heritage
• provide quality assurance on collections – through feedback and continued training
• provide recommended technical specifications on digitizing and how to digitize
• provide training in metadata/catalog creation
• upload digitized materials and collections onto NY Heritage
• invites contributors to be members of CLRC’s Digitization SIG
• matching interns to collections and mentors throughout the CLRC area

In addition on NY Heritage, you can find a collection of digital exhibits and supporting materials, ideal for classroom use and other educational settings.  We also have physical traveling banner exhibits created using content from statewide NY Heritage collections that members can borrow for display.  Learn more about the reservable banner exhibits down below.

NYH Metadata Dictionary and Usage Guide (Version 6)

NYH Contributor page for more resources

NYH Website Traffic

New York State Historic Newspapers

CLRC partners with the Northern New York Library Network (NNYLN) to support contributions to New York State Historic Newspapers, an ever-growing repository of newspapers from across New York State.

You can see the projects they are currently working on here.

Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative (Empire ADC)

A searchable repository of archival finding aids hosted by Southeastern NY Library Resources Council (SENYLRC), it houses electronic archival description finding aids (EADs).  You can search and browse finding aids to discover what historical materials and archival collections held in cultural heritage organizations and institutions are available for your research and where to find them across New York State.

CLRC will cover the first year costs of the one time set up fee and the first year annual fee for new members.

Empire State Immersive Experiences (ESIE)

A repository for hosting 360º images and panorama tours, it is administered by Western NY Library Resources Council (WNYLRC).  It can be used to highlight places, landmarks, and objects in your community, and you can create and share virtual walking tours or use 360º images to supplement learning.

Empire State Library Network Academic Institutional Repository (ESLN AIR)

An institutional repository platform by Ubiquity Press for our academic library members.  Ubiquity provides easy, flexible hosting for institutions looking to house their public, private, and embargoed works at a fraction of the cost of competitors like BePress or Digital Commons.

Digital Dark Archive

The Digital Dark Archive is a long term storage of digital files meant to serve as a “last resort” or backup; created and administered by Southeastern NY Library Resources Council (SENYLRC), digital preservation is available for CLRC members in the Digital Dark Archive (DDA).  The DDA is not intended to be a depositor’s only backup system but to provide an additional storage solution for a comprehensive digital preservation strategy.

CLRC will take your preservation-quality master copies and send them to the DDA, where the files will be processed via Archivematica and stored via Amazon Glacier.  As a courtesy, CLRC will add its members’ NY Heritage collections that were digitized in the DigLab to the DDA for free.

For more information on digital preservation, please visit Southeastern Digital Dark Archive.