The Digital Possibilities Series

The Digital Possibilities webinar series is a joint venture of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) and Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC), brought to you by LibraryLinkNJ's participation in the Professional Development Alliance of Library Consortia. 

Participation in this multi-part summer series requires registration for each separate webinar you wish to attend. Please see the descriptions of the Digital Possibilities events and dates below, and use the links provided to register for some or all of these valuable webinars! 

Digital Possibilities Series Session 1: Tending the Community - Building and Sustaining a Crowdsourced Transcription Project
Wednesday, June 3rd; 12pm-1pm EDT
Newberry Transcribe invites volunteers to help unlock the Newberry Library's handwritten historical collections — one document at a time. In this webinar, Digital Services Librarian Jen Wolfe discusses the philosophy behind the project, the outreach strategies that have built an active volunteer community, and the ongoing work of sustaining a transcription program after launch. Attendees will come away with a framework for thinking about crowdsourced transcription not as a technical problem but as a community relationship — one that remains meaningful even in an age of AI.
Use the following link to register for this event: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/digital-possibilities-series-tending-community-building-and-sustaining-crowdsourced-transcription

Digital Possibilities Series Session 2: Strategies for the Digitization of Municipal Archives - The Chicago City Council Audio Recordings, 1970-2012
Wednesday, June 10th; 2pm-3pm EDT
In 2024 Chicago's Office of the City Clerk was awarded a Recordings at Risk grant by the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize a collection of City Council meeting audio recordings that span 40 years of Chicago political history. In this webinar, Matt Messbarger will explain the specific challenges faced and strategies developed to plan and complete this large-scale project with a focus on access and preservation of a unique record of Chicago history.
Use the following link to register for this event: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/digital-possibilities-series-strategies-digitization-municipal-archives-chicago-city-council-audio

Digital Possibilities Series Session 3: Digitization in a Box - Imagine the Possibilities!
Tuesday, June 23rd; 2pm-3pm EDT
The FLVC Digital Services + OER team, led by Rebel-Cummings-Sauls, will describe the “Digitization in a Box” Program — its origin, development, launch, and progress. Windy Gamble, of North Florida College, will share her institution’s journey in using the equipment, learning from FLVC's training, and succeeding in digitization as a newbie.
Use the following link to register for this event: https://flvc.libcal.com/calendar/Master/digitalpossibilitiesdiab

Digital Possibilities Series Session 4: Digital Realities and Possibilities for a Sousa Archives Researcher
Wednesday, July 8th; 2pm-3pm EDT
The University of Illinois’ Sousa Archives and Center for American Music is both a special collections music archives and museum whose historical collections document diverse music cultures, legacies, and technologies in North, Central, and South America as well as portions of Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Our collections are meant to be actively engaged by people of all ages and music backgrounds and abilities.  Our philosophy is grounded in providing access to our music collections using all available resources and technologies to enable our visitors to engage with our collections physically, intellectually, and actively.
This philosophy for archives and museums might seem obvious to librarians.  However, many archives and museums’ music collections frequently remain silent, dead, and forgotten.  The music and instrument’s voices no longer speak for themselves because they are either carefully exhibited behind glass or preserved in specialized storage cabinets as music paperweights until discovered and explored by specialized music scholars. 

Today’s technologies hold much promise for archives and museum’s music collections because these digital resources and tools now make it possible for scholarly researchers and the public to actively engage with these unique historical collections both on-site and online from anywhere in the world.  In this presentation, Scott Schwartz will highlight how the Sousa Archives approaches on-site and online public engagement to its music collections using some of today’s digital technologies. 
Use the following link to register for this event: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/digital-possibilities-series-sousa-archives-and-center

Digital Possibilities Series Session 5: Meet the Chicago Collections Consortium and Revs Institute
Wednesday, July 15th; 11am-12pm EDT
The Chicago Collections Consortium (CCC) is a membership organization of 60+ institutions composed of public and private universities, public libraries, special libraries, museums, and other repositories with collections that chronicle the rich history of Chicago. Its portal, EXPLORE Chicago Collections, is its flagship initiative, providing "one stop shopping": a site for researchers, teachers, students, and the public to find digital images and locate archival holdings on Chicago topics without searching individual institutions' online catalogs one at a time. Founded in 2012 with twelve governing members, CCC has since grown to 60+ members. Ellen Keith, Executive Director, will discuss the portal, the organization's other outreach activities, and the organization's next steps in its second decade.

Revs Institute will share how they are embracing emerging technologies and digital dissemination to expand access, enhance discovery, and preserve specialized knowledge.  Arthur Carlson, Director of Archives and Research Center - Revs Institute, will highlight current projects at Revs Institute including a machine learning metadata generation project, the development of a specialized large language learning model to support research, and efforts to document and share specialized at-risk knowledge and share that with the world.
Use the following link to register for this event: https://www.carli.illinois.edu/digital-possibilities-series-meet-chicago-collections-consortium-and-revs-institute

Digital Possibilities Series Session 6: Strategic Approaches to Transcription
Wednesday, July 29th; 2pm-3pm EDT
Liz Bloodworth, Illinois Wesleyan University, will discuss the use of AI tools for transcription of both oral history interviews and handwritten text documents. With increasing demands on staff time, especially in small shop archives, AI offers an opportunity to enhance the discoverability of archival materials through efficient transcription. Liz will share tips for using AI tools ethically and responsibly, stressing the importance of human review throughout the process. 

Then, Chris Levesque will discuss digital engagement in the University of West Florida’s Citizen Archivist Projects. During Library Week 2025 and 2026, the UWF University Libraries hosted participatory transcription events of letters and ship logs from their Digital Archives. This effort built on the well-known National Archives' Citizen Archivist model to engage students, faculty, and the larger UWF community. This talk will discuss selection of materials, implementation of the project, and lessons learned.
Use the following link to register for this event: https://flvc.libcal.com/calendar/Master/digitalpossibilitiesuwf