The year 2023 means a new chapter in the revival of our Digital Alcohol Archives project. As project leader, I started my sabbatical leave in January to focus on the preservation and digitization of the defunct Alcohol Archives Collection for six months, strongly supported by both New Brunswick Libraries and the Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies (CAS). The long term goal is to develop a sustainable online presence for this unparalelled collection.
But how do I pick it up where I left off after such a long break, over a year, if I just think of this latest cycle? Where do I pick it up? After the collection moved out of CAS in early 2017, there was a hiatus even longer, four years, by the time I was able to find time, besides all other responsibilities, to regroup and consider what would happen if I abandon the project. It was the eleventh hour indeed.
With that in mind, the decision is that I’ll work on it, one day at a time, doing the best I can with whatever resources I have. Here is what I keep telling myself: If I don’t do it now, no one ever will. It is a big responsibility, to begin with, but abandoning the project? That’s even bigger.
The other decision I made early resulted in this post: I am going to document my journey the best I can. A fan of meticulous record keeping, I’d do it anyway, why not share the process as we go on this blog roll? Our online culture encourages everyone to put their lives on display. Discovering archival resources about a field reinventing itself should be just as internet-worthy as people discovering and reinventing themselves. These posts may not sound polished, let alone eloquently written, but I’m hoping to look back one day and feel happy about how far we’ve come.
Following in the footsteps of the Yale and Rutgers CAS staff, one is aware of the big shoes to fill. The task of digitizing and putting such a valuable collection online is daunting. But we had worked on it in the past, we had put a lot of thought and effort into the earlier iterations. The CAS Information Services Newsletters document the legs of that journey: content presented on the CAS website revamped under my leadership in the library in 2008, the first version of the Digital Archives on scarletapps (i.e., the Rutgers version of Google products) in 2012, the attempts to save our content in a safe place called AlcVault in 2013, and the two Drupal-based web versions in 2014 and 2016.
When I taught the course Digital Library Technologies in the Master of Information program at the Rutgers School of Information and Communication from 2007 through 2014, my goal with the semester-long group project was to provide the “been there, done that” feeling to my students before they get on the job market. The pilot digital libraries they submitted at the end of the semester were of diverse topics (and quality too) and the learning curve was pretty steep for all participants. However, it gave them exposure to a whole new world of digital platforms, hands-on experience with digital projects, including project management, and even a cv-worthy “deliverable” such as the Devil’s Mouthwash on the Omeka platform using the Alcohol Collection.
They also gained the confidence of leaping into the unknown without losing it all before they even started their next digital project. I managed to take them there, which gives me confidence today that I’ll be able to accomplish my goals with the current project.