Colorado Railroad Museum CHRAB Grant

*Posted on behalf of Jacqueline Frisina.

The Colorado Historical Records Advisory Board gave the Colorado Railroad Museum (CRRM) a grant in order to digitize 313 negatives from the museum collection. These negatives were selected from the Ralph E. Hallock Photograph collection, and were chosen for their historic value since they showcase various railroads in Colorado. CRRM collaborated with the Denver Public Library (DPL) to host and complete the digitization process, since DPL owns the digitization equipment necessary for the project.

As the digitization technician, working on this project has been a fantastic learning experience for me. I’m currently a Library and Information Science student at the University of Denver, and although I had classroom experience in digitization, I was eager to apply my knowledge to a real-life digitization project. To get these images online, I digitized the negatives, edited the resulting images in Photoshop, created metadata using Qualified Dublin Core, and utilized CONTENTdm for uploading and editing items. I gained skills and experience that will be valuable for future projects, and in the process, I also learned about the history of railroads in Colorado.

As an added bonus, I was able to complete the project 4 months earlier than anticipated, thanks to the expert guidance of DPL employees Craig Haggit and Ben Miller, as well as the collaboration with CRRM volunteer Tom Madden. The early completion of the original project allowed for an additional 100 images to be digitized from the John Buvinger Collection. 

As a result of this project, hundreds of historical images that were previously difficult to access are now readily available to the public. This will help researchers, avid railroad fans (also known as railfans), historians, or people who are generally interested in the history of trains and/or Colorado. Check out the images here at the DPL Digital Collections!

*Jacqueline Frisina is finishing up her coursework for a library science degree from the University of Denver, and was responsible for the day-to-day project coordination with the Colorado Railroad Museum, digitization of materials, description, and making them available online.