On Tuesday, August 12, VTDNP Project Librarian, Erenst Anip and Digital Support Specialist, Karyn Norwood went to Middlebury, VT to attend a meeting of the Cultural Heritage Professional Gathering (CHPG) at the Ilsley Public Library. There, Erenst & Karyn gave a pecha-kucha format presentation (20 slides at 20 seconds each) about VTDNP and Chronicling America in front of 25 cultural heritage professionals coming from Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York. In addition, Erenst & Karyn got to visit one of VTDNP’s state partner, the Ilsley Public Library, and Chris Kirby, one of our Project Management Group member.

On the very next day, August 13, Erenst virtually traveled to Geneva, Switzerland to give a presentation entitled “Start spreading the digitized news. A journey in social media usage for outreach in a cooperative digitization project” (slides in pdf). This presentation was given at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2014 Satellite Meeting (of the Newspaper Section). Once again, the focus of Erenst’s presentation was on marketing and outreach of a digital resource created (Chronicling America) so that users (taxpayers) can be aware of such wonderful (and freely accessible) resource online. This effort can and need to be implemented by similar digitization projects around the world.