The Fleet Library at the RI School of Design (RISD) digitized 298 tapes from the library’s archive of over 2,000 videos in various magnetic tape formats, such as betamax, U-matic, and VHS, that captured events held at RISD in the 1980s and 1990s. The tapes documented the college’s Universal Kitchen project in the 1990s, which had a major impact on subsequent accessibility and universal design developments. Other tapes contained lectures by major artists, designers, and cultural figures, including Maya Angelou, Dore Ashton, Carlos Fuentes, and Allen Ginsburg. These recordings were in a state of decay and at risk of being lost if not transferred to a preservable media. The contents of the tapes are of interest to art and design faculty and students, art historians, curators, scholars, and the general public.

The recordings are historically significant to those interested in arts and culture in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, including disability studies scholars, historians of art, architecture and design education, and biographers of the artists and scholars whose presentations were documented. Much of the digitized content is freely available to anyone with computer and internet access. Presently, the project has primarily benefited internal RISD audiences and has received positive initial feedback. 

The South Kingstown Public Library (SKPL) digitized several years of the Narragansett Times newspaper to increase findability and access to a significant historical resource for South Kingstown and southern Rhode Island. This also resulted in the preservation of a heavily used local history resource that the library holds, as well as the ability to have simultaneous users through a digital platform instead of the single use of the library’s microfilm holdings. 

Project beneficiaries include adults and seniors, specifically researchers and genealogists that have often used the library’s in-house materials for research. Staff also benefited by being able to easily find answers to reference requests. As a result of the project and activities, the SKPL website saw increases in website traffic.  Website analytics from August thru September 30 reported 22,615 views by 613 users (595 new). One unexpected benefit of this project has been a better understanding of website usage and Google Analytics among the library staff. 

The Woonsocket Harris Public Library digitized 60 years of the Woonsocket Call newspaper in a format that is text searchable. The project sought to preserve historical content, for ease of search and discovery of information, and to provide more efficient public service and workflow. The reference department receives inquiries from people worldwide seeking articles from the newspaper, particularly for content from the early twentieth century and war years, which was previously unavailable online. Due to a shortage of library staff, research was completed when time permitted, leaving requests on hold. The staff experienced an increase of requests during the pandemic from people interested in researching their family history. Online access of this newspaper for the public enhances services greatly, frees up staff time for completion of other projects, preserves the community’s written history, and offers people the opportunity to complete research at their leisure.

The project has made a valuable resource available to the community. The website went live in September 2021 and received 294 hits on that day. Early results indicate that the project will be valuable and viable in the future as the website continues to be utilized, extending the value of the project indefinitely and substantially expanding access to the resource. The library also noted that replacing the manual process of loading and searching for microfilm articles with an online OCR search tool helps improve search results.