The Portal to Texas History

Project Name and URL:

The Portal to Texas History located at http://texashistory.unt.edu/

Organization Name:

This project is founded by University of North Texas Libraries' Digital Projects Unit.

Description of what was digitized:

Texas History Materials in the form of genealogies and pictures of relatives to historical maps.

Audience for the project:

The project is geared towards patrons who have an interest in Texas History or specific content formats like maps, photos, cities, etc.

Type of Project background Information available on site:

There is a small about us page that contains a basic synopsis of the type of content and where the content came from. It is a collection from Texas libraries, museums, genealogical societies, and private family collections which have come together in an all inclusive database. It is very similar to the Texas Heritage Online in its concept and in practice the two sites have very similar search bars and it is a bit of déjà vu. The project itself started in 2002 and really gained momentum in 2004 combining five different partners into one database. Today it has ninety-five partners and contains over 420,000 images of digitized content.

Metadata present:

It has a very basic metadata presence containing description, creator, location, creation date, partners, and the collection in their brief record. The full record contains more descriptors like language, subjects, keywords which is a help for patrons, resource type, and identifier.

Additional Information:

It has a nice section for educators on how to teach lessons revolving around the website and its content. They also have Facebook page with updates on their latest news and RSS feeds for heir information as well. These features add to an already positive environment that although it is not the grandest or most attractive site, for usability it proves to be a worthy digitization project with a nice database.