About this collection

Digitization of Skokie Fair Housing Collection

Skokie Public Library is responsible for digitizing the documents in this digital collection, for the purposes of both preservation and ease of access.

The work of scanning and descriptive metadata production was done by Skokie Public Library Digital Collections librarian, volunteers, and library school students from the Spring of 2016 to the Fall of 2017.

Scanning and file information

Documents were scanned at 400 dpi using an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner. Most documents were scanned in 16-bit grayscale or 24-bit color, depending on the condition of the original document, and saved as individual TIFF files in accordance with current digital archive best practices. We retain the TIFF files for long-term digital storage, but due to their large file size, we do not provide access to them online. Instead, the TIFF files were converted to PDF files because most of the items were documents and not still images. If a document comprised multiple pages, these pages were digitally bound into a single PDF file. 

Following this digitization process, descriptive metadata was created for each item, which was then uploaded into the Omeka content management system, the interface used to browse, search, and view the collection.

The original physical documents belong to and are stored by the Skokie Historical Society, which is housed by the Skokie Heritage Museum.

Rights

The documents in this collection were created by many different authors and organizations. 

The majority of the documents in this digital archive and exhibit originated from the late Donald P. Perille, who donated them to the Skokie Historical Society for preservation and to the Skokie Public Library in January 2016, for the purposes of digitization. The remainder of the documents were part of the Skokie Historical Society’s existing collection.

Skokie Public Library provides online access to its Digital Collections for research, discovery, lifelong learning, and personal enrichment.

Aside from material produced directly by the library, we do not own the copyright to materials we have included in our digital collections. We aim to determine that information related to copyright and other restrictions in our collections is accurate and we make our digital collections publicly accessible under the following circumstances:

• We own the copyright or have been given permission by the copyright holder(s) to provide access to the materials.
• The materials are in the public domain or no longer have copyright restrictions.
• We have determined that providing access to the digital collection or items within that collection is in accordance with the principles of fair use.

Following best practices for digital collections of historic and cultural materials, the metadata associated with items in our digital collections include, or will soon include, a standardized rights statement from RightsStatements.org. For the items we have not yet updated, we provided as much rights information as was available at the time of digitization.

We encourage use of the materials in these collections for research and personal use, but it is the user’s responsibility to secure permission for reproduction rights.

We are interested in hearing from copyright owners who have not been properly identified so that we can update our records. If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material included in our digital collections without your permission, please contact our Digital Collections Librarian. We will remove the material in question from our online collection until we are able to assess the concern.