Environmental History:About the Project:

Operating Principles helped refine the intent and purpose of the virtual research collection as well as the material to be inlcuded in the project

• Audience
• Themes
• Selection Criteria for Digitized Images

Audiences for the Virtual Collection

Educational Users

• College and University Faculty

• High School teachers

• 4 th and 7 th Grade NYS teachers, especially for development of Document-based questions (DBQs)

Administrative Users

• Government agencies
• Regional and local government departments
• Surveyors
• Attorneys

Historical Users

• Environmental historians
• Researchers
• Authors/journalists
• Publishers
• Local historians
• Environmental historians
• Policy makers and planners (legislators)
• Environmental activists and organizations
• Industry/Corporations

Themes

This list is derived from environmental themes identified, and those suggested by the Partners & Advisory Groups. They were used to guide the selection and description processes.

• Land Use (including eminent domain, community development, historic preservation, and forestry)

• Water (including quantity/quality/pollution, dams, reservoirs)

• Protection

• Pollution

• Energy
• Solid and Hazardous Waste Disposal
• Biodiversity
• Recreation (including outdoor use, tourism/tourists)
• Public Health (Tuberculosis)
• Policy & Law
• Citizen action Through Organizations and Government
• Roles of Business and Corporations (especially mining, forestry, lumber, agriculture)
• Environmental Education and Technical Assistance
• Science and Technology
• Funding of Environmental Affairs
• People/Groups/Cultures

• Religion
• Management of Natural Resources
• Transportation (especially canals, interstates, railroads)
• Fires
• Cultural/Esthetic/Artistic Significance

Criteria for Selecting Materials for Digitization

Mandatory criteria:

• Relevant to themes/goals/audience
  
• Cohesive thematic focus
  
• Clear ownership of material and copyright to it; or, copyright permission is considered easily obtainable
  
• Manageable size

Probably necessary criteria:

• Processed with finding aid
  
• Past user demand or anticipated future user demand justifies electronic access
  
• Relatively easy to describe
  
• Physically stable
  
• Historical significance

Desirable criteria:

• Visually interesting
  
• Diverse formats (e.g. text, still picture, motion picture, sound,  microformat)
  
• Representative example of document type
  
• Interlocking collections/items (i.e., Cockburn family papers (State Library) and Cockburn field books (State Archives))
  
• Items that document change over time
  
• Items that are exemplars of a series/collection and that help users understand its nature and content
  
• Seminal items/collections
  
• Scope of materials is broad enough to provide context for understanding their significance

Formats that are good candidates for imaging:

• Maps
• Photographs
• Prints
• Drawings
• Paintings
• Archives/textual documents
• Newspaper cartoons
• Scrapbooks
• Aerial photographs
• Broadsides
• Postcards
• Stereo views
• Audiovisual: sound recordings, motion pictures
• Sheet music
• Artifacts (3-D)
• Land papers: leases, fieldbooks