Do you have photographs of your time at UAA/ACC/all the other initials that you want to have digitized? Are you looking for an opportunity to share those photos with the world (or at the very least, other UA types)? Would you like to further our educational mission by making your photos available for research and use? Well, we have a solution.
We are excited to introduce our Sharing Community Images Project as an opportunity for the campus community to get involved with the Archives and share their photos with the world. We will be holding our scanning day for University of Alaska Anchorage employees and students in the Archives (Library 305) on Tuesday October 4. Come visit anytime between 9 am and 4 pm, bring up to 5 photos, have a cookie or three, we’ll scan your photos (or download if digital) while you wait, and if you want, we’ll even take you on a tour of the Archives.
If you’re interested in this but don’t have UAA or ACC-related photos, keep watching here: we’ll be doing a public event on Saturday, October 15 where anything Alaskan is fair game.
What is the Sharing Community Images Project?
As part of our ongoing effort to document the diverse perspectives represented in our community, we invite community members to contribute their own photographs to the Archives. We will have a number of scanning stations set up in the Archives, which Archives staff will use to digitize the photos. We will also be accepting photographs created digitally. The digitized photographs will be made available to the public for research and use through PicturingUAA, furthering the Archives’ primary goal of providing access. The Archives will also keep high-resolution master copies of the images, preserving a small slice of life here on campus. Participants in the project will receive high-resolution digital copies of their photographs.
What should you bring and what are the limitations?
We encourage participants to bring photographs from any time period, including the present. We also hope to get photographs that portray a wide variety of subjects, including events, scenery, wildlife, buildings, and people. Because our goal is to provide access and allow the copying and use of the digital images, we ask that you bring photographs that are in the public domain or to which you own copyright (i.e. you or one of your parents were the photographer).
Due to time constraints, we will only be able to scan three photographs per person. We have the equipment to scan photographic prints, slides, and negatives, and we are happy to scan any of those formats. Please be sure to bring the original photographs, rather than photocopies. We will also be accepting photographs taken digitally with a digital camera or cell phone. If you would like to submit digital photographs, please bring them to us on a USB drive, SD card, or CD.
In addition to bringing your photographs to scan, we have a couple of forms for you to fill out. In order to make the photographs available for use on PicturingUAA, we need permission to authorize use of the photographs. Our image use form (pdf) allows you to retain copyright while providing us with permission to provide access and allow use of the photographs. You can either fill it out in advance and bring it with you, or we’ll have copies here for you to sign.
The second form is the photo information form. When we add images to PicturingUAA, we also include descriptive information about the photographs, such as the creator, location, dates, and subjects of the photographs. That’s what makes the photographs searchable online. When you bring in your photographs, one of our archivists will work with you to gather the information.
We look forward to working on this project! Thank you so much for being willing to share your memories with the many people who are interested in campus photographs worldwide. Again, if you’re not a UA student or employee or you have other photos of Alaska that don’t relate to the campus, we’ll be doing this again on October 15, 2016 during Archives month. Keep an eye out here, or on our Twitter (@CLArchives) or Facebook feeds for more details. If you’d like to have us do this with your community organization or small campus group, please contact us: we’ll see what we can arrange!