Stereograph of Gay Street in Knoxville
Migrating Digital Collections
by Louisa Trott
March 28, 2019  •  2 minute read

Over the last year or so, we’ve been migrating our digital collections from several older platforms to one which improves the collections’ discoverability and provides a more robust infrastructure to support better long-term preservation. Not only does this make for a more cohesive look to the collections, but significant improvements to the metadata mean that the collections are now easier to find and search, and can be shared with wider audiences such as through the Digital Public Library of America.

Stereoview of Gay Street from Images of East Tennessee collection
Stereoview of Gay Street from Images of East Tennessee collection.

Collections Unearthed

Four collections which the migration process has really helped bring to life are the Knoxville Gardens Slides, the Anna Catherine Wiley Sketches, Photographs of the Ruskin Cooperative Association, and Images of East Tennessee. These four collections were previously somewhat buried within the miscellany formerly known as “Special Collections Images.” Now, as stand-alone collections, with enhanced descriptive metadata, they are more visible and discoverable.

Knoxville Gardens Slides

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Anna Catherine Wiley Sketches

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Images of East Tennessee

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Photographs of the Ruskin Cooperative Association

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Visit digital.lib.utk.edu to learn more about them and enjoy the rich, hand-painted colors of the Knoxville Gardens Slides, the delicate sketches of Knoxville’s prominent impressionist artist, Catherine Wiley, life in a utopian socialist colony in Tennessee, and to browse an assortment of images depicting buildings and locations throughout East Tennessee.