About This Site

Design

The present site, released September 2003, was designed by various staff and students of the CSU Libraries with a grant from the Colorado Digitization Program. Special features of this Web site include transcripts of oral histories, audio files, and photographic images.

The current Web site design, completed August 2008, is by Larry Wilson. The Paul Whyman illustration, representing a German homestead near the Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, was incorporated as the backgound of the top banner. Audio interview players were coded by Yongli Zhou. Technical support was provided by webmaster Greg Vogl.

Database

The digital objects in this collection are stored in CONTENTdm, a digital collection management database application developed by DiMeMa and marketed by OCLC. The database also contains metadata (descriptive, technical, and subject analysis information) about each of the objects. CONTENTdm allows searching from two different search interfaces (basic and advanced), as well as hot-linking of search terms within the catalog record.

Technical information on the transcripts
and audio files

Original transcripts were scanned and saved in TIFF format. Optical character recognition (OCR) was performed by opening the TIFF files in Scansoft's OmniPage Pro and using its blocking and OCR tools, and the results were saved as Word documents. We used Word to correct any OCR errors, incorporate hand-written corrections and notes from the original transcript into the text, and add notes to indicate inaudible portions or areas where the transcription was unclear. Once the Word files were corrected, they were converted to PDF format to create the final access version.

The oral histories in our collection were digitized from cassette tape by Mediawerx Corporation in Colorado Springs. On their recommendation, the digitized audio was stored in AIFF format. The AIFF files were burned to CD-R, one CD for each tape. Portions of the oral histories were extracted from these CDs using Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge, and saved in MP3 format for use as access versions.

Finding Aid

A finding aid is an inventory of primary resource materials (e.g., audio recordings, diaries, government documents, letters, photographs, research data) in a collection held by an archive, library, or museum. It provides the user with varying levels of description and analysis of individual items, plus their intellectual organization. Finding aids are essential to understanding the nature and content of a collection and for determining the likelihood that it will satisfy a scholar's research needs. The finding aid for the Germans from Russia collection was written by Colleen McCorkell and encoded for online access using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) by Alicia Conrardy.

Preferred Citation

To cite the Germans from Russia Collection or any documents, sound files, or images it contains, please include the complete title of the collection, its URL, and the date you accessed it, along with the other relevant documentation.

Acknowledgements

This Web site is the culmination of a great deal of work by a number of people. The following individuals are thanked for their contributions.

From the CSU Libraries: During the 2002-2003 project year, the following people were involved: Dawn Bastian, Marcy Bowman, Carmel Bush, Nancy Chaffin Hunter, Alicia Conrardy, Lynn Jickling, Jennifer Kutzik, Diane Lunde, Michelle Mach, Colleen McCorkell, Tami Morse McGill, Dennis Ogg, Lori Oling, Patty Rettig, Conni Succo, Pat Vandeventer, and Paul Whyman.

From the CSU Department of History: Dr. Kenneth Rock and Dr. James E. Hansen (Professor Emeritus).