NEFLIN 2006-2007 Mini-Grants

APPLICATION

Application Due: November 15, 2006

LIBRARY NAME George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida

MAILING ADDRESS P. O. Box 117001, Gainesville, FL 32611-7001

CONTACT PERSON Stephanie C. Haas

PHONE NUMBER (352) 846-0129

E-MAIL ADDRESS haas(@uflib.ufl.edu

PROJECT OVERVIEW (no more than 100 words):

"Alachua County Voices: Oral History Digitization is a collaborative project between the Matheson Museum, Gainesville and the
University of Florida Libraries. The Matheson's 100 local oral histories (transcripts and audio cassettes) will be migrated to digital
formats by the Digital Library Center, University of Florida. All of the transcripts and selected audio portions will be available on the
Web and shared with the digital oral history initiative coordinated by the State Library and Archives. Training materials and a
workshop on digital oral histories will be developed by Karen Thomas, Associate Director, Reichelt Oral History Program, Florida
State University.

FUNDS REQUESTED $5,894 + $1,980 (IDC)* = $7,874
*IDC is formally negotiated with the federal government and must be included.
PRIORITY # 1 of 7_ APPLICATIONS) SUBMITTED

TYPE OF LIBRARY: ] PUBLIC X ACADEMIC 0 SPECIAL O SCHOOL (K-12)

I have received my Library Director's approval to submit this application. ILYES ONO

Printed'Name

SignaturA Date

Completed application is due in the NEFLIN office by November 15, 2006.
Mail: NEFLIN, 2233 Park Avenue, Suite 402, Orange Park, FL 32073
Or Email: office@neflin.org

Questions? Contact Brad Ward (brad@neflin.org or 904-278-5620).

Mini-Grant Application Page 1 of 3

NEFLIN 2006-2007 Mini-Grants

APPLICATION

Attach a statement that includes the following (no more than 2 pages):

Describe your library. (Include information about staff, collection, budget, and community served.)

The University of Florida is a public, land-grant research university, one of the most comprehensive in the United States and it
encompasses virtually all academic and professional disciplines. It is the oldest and largest of Florida's eleven universities with a
faculty of approximately 4,000 and a student body of 48,000. The University is a member of the Association of American
Universities and offers the Ph.D. in more than 90 fields and the Master's degree in more than 120 fields.

The University of Florida Libraries [http://www.uflib.ufl.edu] is a member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Center for
Research Libraries, and the Research Libraries Group. The library staff consists of more than 400 FTE librarians, technical/clerical
staff, and student assistants. The operating budget for 2006-2007 is $25,539,462.
The faculty and staff of the libraries support the university's threefold mission: education, research and service. Service is the
university's obligation to share the benefits of its knowledge for the public good. Increasingly the library is seeking to develop
cooperative projects that benefit the university, the community, and the citizens of Florida

Describe your need for this project.

The Digital Library Center of the George A. Smathers Libraries has tens of thousands of gigabytes of digital information that are
available as part of the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) initiative http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc. To date these
projects have focused on textual and photographic objects. A current goal is to move into the creation and serving of audio files. The
Alachua County Voices project will allow the DLC to begin to develop specific skills related to this goal by partnering with the
Matheson Museum, Gainesville to provide online access to transcripts and selected audio portions from 100 existing oral history
interviews. Future digitally recorded interviews collected by the Matheson will be incorporated into the collection.

This initiative is an expansion of a current partnership with the Matheson Museum on the Ephemeral Cities project. Ephemeral Cities
is a map-based historic journey to Tampa, Gainesville, and Key West between 1884-1903 which will allow users to identify structures
of interest on early fire insurance maps and then broadcast a search to look for print and photographic information on the activities and
- inhabitants of the buildings. The Matheson Museum permitted relevant portions of its postcard collection to be digitized for the
Ephemeral Cities project. In turn, UF maintains the Matheson Museum Digital Collections site for them
[http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?c=fotol&s=mhcc]. The time period covered will soon be extended further into the 1900s
and the 100 oral histories offer a new format to be integrated into the exploration of Gainesville's history.

Because the Matheson's analog tape collection has potential for deteriorating after 10 years, the current project will help preserve the
existing collection. Dr. Karen Thomas will coordinate the activities between the Matheson, the University of Florida, and the state-
wide oral history initiative to which she is a consultant. She will assist the Matheson in preparing its collection for digitization and
inclusion in online collections and provide instruction to enable the Matheson to digitally collect oral histories in the future. Although
all rights to the interviews have been legally assigned to the Matheson, Leslie Lee, Electronic Distribution consultant, will contact
interviewees to verify agreement with internet distribution. Alachua County Voices will be a model for future collaboration with
other local Florida historical museums who wish to share their oral histories.

Alachua County Voices includes interviews with individuals from all walks of life. Politicians, postmasters, and juke joint enthusiasts
all hold forth. This collection enhances the Samuel Proctor Oral History [http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?g=spohp]
collection at UF which consists of 1300 transcripts of interviews from the Samuel Proctor collection including Seminoles, Cherokees,
and Creeks, African Americans in Florida, civil rights activities in St. Augustine (1964), women in Florida, pioneer settlers, a history
of Florida education, the citrus industry, and the Florida Highway Patrol.

This project allows the University of Florida to develop a digital audio expertise, to expand the research materials available to the
students and faculty at the University, to enrich the digital collections available to the citizens of Florida, and to assist the Matheson in
developing its digital presence and preserving its existing oral history collection using state-of-the-art techniques.

Mini-Grant Application Page 2 of 3

How do you expect this grant will address the need you described?

Funding this collaborative project will allow UF to purchase the Sound Forge 8 software needed to convert analog oral history tapes
to digital formats. In addition, it will permit UF to develop the inhouse expertise needed to support future audio digital projects By
drawing on the oral history expertise of Dr. Thomas, the digitization expertise of the Digital Library Center, and the willingness of the

Matheson Museum to share its oral history collection, the development team can determine the most appropriate procedures and
technologies needed to support similar conversion projects throughout the state. Dr. Thomas will incorporate the insights of this
project into her work as the oral history consultant for the state-wide Florida Electronic Library project.

The University of Florida will provide access to these interviews by creating both searchable metadata records and by providing full
text searching of the transcripts. The search functionality will be similar to that currently provided at the Samuel Proctor Oral History
site http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?g=spohp

This project will allow UF to test the digital archiving capabilities of the Florida Digital Archive, maintained by the Florida Center for
Library Automation, which will archive and preserve the master text and audio files created from the oral history interviews. At the
current time, there are no costs for archiving for the public university libraries in Florida, but should costs be levied in the future, UF
will pay for all of the oral history files contributed as part of this project, now and in the future.

What resources from your institution will be involved in this project (staff, time, etc.)?

UF has purchased a multimedia server that will serve the oral history transcripts and downloadable audio files created during this
project. Gold based CD/DVDs will be used as the offline storage medium. The creation of searchable texts from the transcripts can
be accomplished with existing staff and software. Each of the transcripts will be OCR'd using Prime Recognition software. The
transcripts will be reviewed for accuracy by trained student staff and then made available over the web. All of the tapes will be
digitally mastered to WAV-PCM files. Selected portions of the digitized audio tapes will be made available as downloadable rmwav
and mp3 files. A minimum of 25 audio clips will be selected by Lisa Auel, Director of the Matheson, in consultation with Dr.
Thomas. Selection will be based on richness of content related to the historic Gainesville environment.

The Matheson Museum will provide staffing for oversight and administrative support including the supervision of the electronic
distribution consultant, Leslie Lee. The Matheson will purchase an upgrade of its collections registration system to facilitate in house
cataloging of the oral histories. In addition, museum volunteers will attend the digital oral history workshop in order to learn technical
expertise in operating digital recording equipment and to hone their overall oral history interviewing skills. Two sets of digital
recording equipment will be purchased for use by the Matheson to replace the two existing analog systems.

How do you expect this grant will impact service to your customers, and/or benefit other NEFLIN members?

Interest in all aspects of Florida history is well documented by the use statistics of the Florida Heritage Collection, a joint project of
the state university academic libraries. To date in 2006, more than 140,000 tables of content were viewed. Although we cannot
accurately project how many citizens will access Alachua County Voices, it is clear from the popularity of all of the online services
that individuals value the ability to share their worlds directly through audio and video. Oral histories capture information not
available in traditional, scholarly historical works. They provide perspectives on individuals who might not otherwise appear in the
historical record and reconfirm the legacy that ordinary individuals make to their communities. This project will not only provide
access to the records collected by the Matheson Museum, but it will create a partnership model for other organizations currently
collecting this important information throughout the state including NEFLIN members.

Insights gained in the Alachua County Voices project will be made available at the project web site and should provide technical
guidelines for smaller institutions and libraries who wish to share their community legacies through digital oral histories. IfNEFLIN
should decide to create a regional oral history collection, the preliminary work of creating guidelines and partnership modeling will be
ready.

Mini-Grant Application Page 3 of 3

Library: George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida

NEFLIN 2006-2007 Mini-Grants

APPLICATION

BUDGET

CONTRACTUAL SERVICES (List each vendor)

Dr. Karen Thomas, Oral History Consultant $ 3,000
(100 hours @ $30/hour)

Leslie Lee, Electronic Distribution Consultant $1,000
(100 hours@ $10)

LIBRARY MATERIALS (Include type and numbers of materials to be purchased)

SUPPLIES (Include a brief description of supplies needed)

2-100 pk MAM-A (Mitsui) gold archival CD-R discs (@ $137) $274
(digital backup storage at UF and Matheson)

Sound Forge 8 digital conversion software for UF $300

EQUIPMENT (Include equipment with a unit cost of $500 or more)

2 Marantz PMD 660 digital recorders ($600 each) for Matheson $1,200

OTHER (Specify)

2 Lexar 1-gigabyte flash cards ($60 each) $120

TOTAL................................................................................................. $ 5 5. 894 + 1 .980 (IDC)=%7.874
(Note: Indirect Costs (IDC) are formally negotiated
with the federal government and must be included.)