Now that IU Day and the 75th running of the IU Student Foundation’s Little 500 is behind us, we’re taking a moment to highlight the behind-the-scenes of our digitization practices. In the last year, our digitization team has scanned nearly 700 items from 10 IU Archives collections, which totals over 14,000 pages digitized and made accessible to the public! Over 12,000 of those pages were digitized for the IU Student Foundation in celebration of the 75th annual Little 500.
Digitization process
Before we send our collections to be digitized, we have to carefully consider which items we should prioritize, and then we prepare them for the digitization process. Given that we have over 40,000 cubic feet of materials, and that digitization is an expensive and time-consuming process, we are not able to digitize everything. Variables we consider when choosing items for digitization include:
- How often are we asked for this item, and by who? Are these requests from someone on campus, or are they remote researchers who need digital copies?
- Would having this item digitized improve our reference or our instruction services?
- What is the physical condition of the item? Is it too fragile to be handled regularly?
- Are there events, exhibits, or classes that would benefit from this information being widely-accessible?
We then review all items for personally-identifiable information (PII), make redactions as needed to comply with privacy regulations including FERPA and HIPAA, and we ensure items are in their best physical condition. Often, we collaborate with our colleagues at the Craig Preservation Lab to clean and stabilize fragile or damaged materials.
While we do some digitization in-house, we more frequently collaborate with our colleagues Jody Mitchell and Caitlyn Smallwood in IU Libraries Digitization Services. When I asked Caitlyn and Jody what they wanted the public to know about digitization, they said the most important thing to consider is that the process takes a lot longer than people think. There are material concerns, like how fragile an item is, and there is a substantial amount of preparation with spreadsheets so that the documents are findable and retrievable after digitization. Their small team has to review every page to ensure the images are clear and complete. Items are also run through optical character recognition (OCR) software which makes the text keyword searchable in Digital Collections. Once items are scanned and QC’d, they are added to long-term storage at the Scholarly Data Archive. Finally, the digitization team lets me know the collection is finished, and I am able to ingest it in Digital Collections and link the digital objects to the finding aid in ArchivesSpace.
What’s new in Digital Collections from IU Archives:
- Indiana University Student Foundation Little 500 programs: Souvenir Little 500 programs distributed by the IUSF, spanning 1951-2025.
- Indiana University Student Foundation scrapbooks: Scrapbooks spanning from 1950-2021 which document the race and other related events at IU Bloomington. This collection is in progress; as of April, 2026 we have completed scrapbooks from 1950-1967.
- Herman B Wells House recipes: Handwritten and typed recipes that were collected by Wells and individuals employed at the Wells House, including recipes for desserts, appetizers, main and side dishes, salads, and condiments.
- Maida Tilchen papers: Maida Tilchen is an Indiana University alumna and activist who focused on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. This collection consists of Tilchen’s papers and collected materials documenting her life in Bloomington, Indiana and the local social justice initiatives of the 1970s.
- New Horizons newsletters and flyers: New Horizons was an independent community center founded in 1975 that intended to serve the increasingly open LGBTQ+ population in Bloomington. This collection consists of newsletters and flyers produced by this organization.
- The Black Student Voice: The Black Student Voice was a newsletter published by the “Office of Afro-American Affairs.” This group was established by Black student activists in the spring of 1968 as a means of advocating for the creation of a formal university office to oversee the academic, social, and financial wellbeing of Black students, faculty, and staff, as well as an academic program in Black Studies.
- Integrity/Bloomington Gabriel newsletters: Formed in 1980, Integrity/Bloomington was the local chapter of Integrity/International, a nationwide LGBTQ+ advocacy and support group affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church. This collection consists of some of the newsletters it produced.
- Bloomington Gay and Lesbian Alliance newsletters: The Bloomington Gay Alliance was an umbrella organization that coordinated many smaller activist and social groups of the Bloomington LGBTQ+ community during the 1970s and 80s. This collection consists of ten newsletters the group published.
- The Armageddon News: The Armageddon News was an FBI-planted, one-page throwaway publication for countering ‘New Left’ activity on college campuses, in particular at Indiana University Bloomington. The collection consists of two issues from 1969.
- Modern Organization for Dance Evolvement records: The Modern Organization for Dance Evolvement (MODE) was a non-profit dance organization founded by Carole Y. Johnson in 1969 that preserved and celebrated Black dance through performance and education. The digital collection consists of issues of their publication The Feet.
- Archives Photograph Collection: The Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management holds a vast photograph and negative collection that comprises approximately two-million images.
One of our ongoing projects that has been fully funded by donors is digitization of the entirety of the Indiana Daily Student. We’re using an outside vendor and work is slow-going, but more than 4100 issues from the 1930s, 40s, 70s, and 80s are now online at go.iu.edu/digiIDS with more added regularly. But fundraising is ongoing, and you can help!
Please feel free to reach out to us about our Digital Collections at archives@iu.edu!
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