The proposed project will complete detailed plans for preserving, digitizing, and cataloguing a portion of the incredible wealth of multi-media materials collected by the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. This will be the first step in making the collection accessible to scholars as well as the general public via a searchable, interactive website. The Southeast Chicago Historical Museum emerged in the early 1980s as the regional steel industry was collapsing and became a central repository for area residents to collect and preserve artifacts relating to the industrial as well as social, cultural, and environmental history of this once vibrant region. The proposed work includes: 1) assessing the condition of the collection; 2)developing criteria for prioritizing content for preservation and digitization; 3)creating a metadata scheme that supports exploration and analysis;4)developing technical standards for preserving assets; and 5)structuring a preservation & digitization work plan
