Milwaukee Neighborhoods Photos and Maps

Let's take a trip east to our neighbor Milwaukee. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, like all universities in the Wisconsin System, has their own archive. UW-Milwaukee's University Archives is situated within the library system on the campus, and so their site is accessed through the library site. They have several different collection areas, including university records and community records. Today I'll  be highlighting the Milwaukee Neighborhoods Photos and Maps digital collection.

 I think this collection perfectly captures the Wisconsin Idea in archives. Here you have a collection that is bringing together many images from Milwaukee's neighborhoods and acknowledging the best and worst Milwaukee has to offer. The article that accompanies this collection explains the fierce loyalties Milwaukee natives have to their neighborhood and the great flavor each neighborhood brings to the city. The article also acknowledges that these distinct neighborhoods have at times enabled poverty and segregation. The University Archives are doing a great job with this collection in not censoring the past, but trying to tell the whole story of the city of Milwaukee. Below is the map users click on the view images from specific neighborhoods. I had a great time clicking on different neighborhoods and perusing through the images.

Here's a photo of a wedding party circa 1940. As you can see below the archive has assigned metadata to the photo (more metadata than what appears in this screen shot). Metadata is literally data about data, and is used to help locate items in a search. All the terms assigned to these images are metadata that help archivists and users locate the images they're interested in. The metadata and descriptions are also vitally important  for creating context for the user. A lot of these images have specific addresses, it would be great to see them uploaded to Historypin.

Below is a better representation of the metadata assigned to the images. This site is a researcher's dream because the metadata is so rich.

 

A great benefit of this collection is you can follow the urban sprawl of Milwaukee as the city expanded. The further you get from the city center, more buildings and facilities are new construction.  This is a great collection and the University Archives are doing a service to Milwaukee and Wisconsin by making this collection accessible online. A researcher can easily access a wealth of knowledge remotely, making the reach of the archive so much greater than in the pre-digital era. 

Finally, the Milwaukee Neighborhoods site suggests to users that if they like what they're seeing, they might also like the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection

and the "Greetings from Milwaukee" digitized postcard collection. Boy were their recommendations right, what fabulous resources to browse.

Check it out!

 [Post created by Laura Farley]