Hello MWDL! Unbelievably enough, we are already halfway through 2024 and want to share some newly-added collections, updates on network activity, and reminders about some upcoming events.

Events

First off, our network Member Meeting will be held Friday, August 9 at University of Utah’s Marriott Library! This is our first face-to-face meeting since 2019 and we’d love to see you there. Please visit our event page for more details and register by Friday, July 19 if you plan to attend. We hope to see you in August!

Next, the DPLA Outreach & Assessment Working Group is hosting a series of learning opportunities throughout the summer about assessment of digital objects and content. The series kicked off in June with a session on Assessing Quality of Open Education Resources (OERs) and will continue in July next Thursday, 7/18 with a session led by the DPLA Wikimedia Working Group. Finally, the D-CRAFT (that’s Digital Content Reuse Assessment Framework Toolkit) project team will give an August 8 session on their work. Please follow the links in the event pages to register for sessions that are of interest!

New Collections

Since spring, we’ve added several new collections from University of Utah-Marriott Library and Utah Historical Society!

Marriott Library

Late spring 2024 brought five new collections from Marriott Library to MWDL. This includes 3 sets of personal papers spanning the late 19th through the early 21st centuries, a collection of alternative student publications from the 1960s, and the records of a Salt Lake City (UT) hospital, Holy Cross Hospital!

• William Harroun Behle Papers
• Reva Beck Bosone Papers
• Lowry Nelson Papers
• Alternative Publications
• Holy Cross Hospital Records

Utah Historical Society (Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement)

Meanwhile, we have two exciting new offerings from Utah Historical Society: Peoples of Utah Revisited and the Utah-Colorado Railroad Map Collection!

Peoples of Utah Revisited extends the existing Peoples of Utah project started by Helen Papanikolas. This crowd-sourced addition adds many more materials from communities throughout Utah gathered during outreach and scanning pop-up events throughout the state.

The Utah-Colorado Railroad Map Collection features meticulous plans from local rail companies like the Oregon Short Line, the Denver and Rio Grande Company, and the Salt Lake and Garfield Western Company and spans the 1910s-1940s. Don’t miss this one, rail enthusiasts! You can also check out our Railroads topic page for relevant collections.

DPLA Updates

MWDL’s May DPLA harvest concluded successfully at the end of the month and we currently have 1,262,959 records available in DPLA’s search portal. Our next harvest will take place next month in August.

DPLA’s search for a new institutional host continues. As previously announced, DPLA opened a call for Expressions of Interest in April followed by a formal Request for Proposals (RfP) due in June. A 13-member Steering Committee  convened to evaluate the five RfP submissions received and discussed them in depth with DPLA staff in late June. You can read more about the process, review the Steering Committee membership, and read the consultant’s cultural heritage program assessment report in this DPLA news post.

DPLA reconfirmed their commitment to stewarding operations to the new host throughout the remainder of 2024 and into the first quarter in yesterday’s Open Board + Community meeting.

We look forward to sharing more as we know it, and hope to see you at Marriott Library in August!