This article appeared in the Volume 5, Issue 1 Spring/Summer 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue.
By Kathleen Ingoldsby
Old Church Gallery, Ltd., a cultural arts museum organized in 1978, and its Floyd Story Center oral history program, dating to 1998, is rooted in community and creative arts traditions. Between the two disciplines, our non-profit has amassed a permanent collection of about 500 cultural objects and 100 oral history interviews. With the help of Radford University Sociology students, we organized, formatted, and renamed digital files until reaching a uniform model, one that works for our small, all-volunteer, non-profit organization. Our next challenge then became clear: how to effectively secure and share the digital output from twenty years of interviews and thirty-five years of cultural artifact collections.
We searched for a collections database that could reach a broad online audience, including research scholars and students. In 2017, we reached out to the university community for guidance. Initially, using Omeka database software, a George Mason University intern assisted with drafting a test site. We corralled categories of collections information into a structured index, which later served as the basis for our website’s menu. During the decision-making process, large manila sheets were diagrammed and, after much consideration, we landed on a very complete category scheme for both objects and interviews.
However, Omeka lacked enough flexibility for our varied programs. After reviewing alternatives, including Collective Access and Past Perfect, we chose a custom WordPress platform. With a Community Foundation of the New River Valley grant in hand, we reasoned that fifty hours of web-designer time would suffice. It did not. But after a year of pandemic-era, Google-Notes exchanges (each contributor in a different color text), we ironed out details using a staging site, just above budget. Our final website design fully integrates our former blog and website with a newly-developed collections database and robust search options.
The core of the WordPress website is our data-entry form, customized to fit a diversity of collections, with both public and private information blocks. See partial record entry form:
We launched the new website, https://oldchurchgallery.org, May, 2022. Today, viewers can browse details of over 200 cultural objects, including coverlets, baskets, quilts, and folk art, in addition to twenty years of oral history records, many complete with audio, images, and video. The Gallery’s folk craft and cultural object collections link the Floyd County maker, the hand-made object itself, and, in an unexpected synergy, some items can be linked back to specific interviews.
As creators of archive-quality output, we’re aware of the dynamic but mutable nature of digital collections. Therefore, following recommendations from the Library of Congress [LOC 2016-2017 Recommended Formats Statement], we archive both original digital content and printed booklets with our 1999-2020 interview transcripts, associated materials, and media. Noting, too, that Archive.org saves only a cursory portion of our website, we will print and bind PDFs of our website’s cultural object pages. A very welcome Virginia Humanities grant is currently funding steps for a Digital Legacy Plan to ensure the safety and accessibility of all our digital collections. These efforts serve to present and preserve the legacy of Floyd County and its creative makers.
Old Church Gallery website managers: Kathleen Ingoldsby, digital archives; Tim Smith, technology; Alice Slusher, collections; Stone Circle Media, custom website
