CVL Collections: 2024 Year in Review

The CVL Collections program began in 2016 to help organizations in Colorado and Wyoming share their unique historic collections online with their communities and with the Digital Public Library of America. Since its inception, the program has been made possible through grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Learn more about CVL Collections and Omeka, the open-source content management systems that underpins the program, on the CVL Collections website.

As the CVL Collections program manager, I wanted to share a snapshot of our year in 2024. There’s a lot to celebrate!

Growth & Participation

The program continued its steady growth in 2024, with 3 new partner organizations launching their live Omeka sites and an additional 3 entering the sandbox phase. This brings our total to 21 live sites and 6 in development. 

Since opening the program to Wyoming in 2023, we now have 2 active WY members with a third in the pipeline. Keep ‘em coming!

Our partners represent a variety of organization types, including:

• Public libraries
• Academic libraries
• Special libraries
• Government libraries
• Archives & historical societies
• Other organizations with special collections 

You can see all of our partners and find links to their Omeka sites on the CVL Collections Current Participants page.

Members continue to show a high rate of satisfaction with the program, as reported in our annual survey. One member noted that:

“The CVL Collections Program makes it possible for our organization to meet the needs of both researchers and all of our internal users–whether interns or students working on other projects.”

Accessibility & Infrastructure

The Omeka infrastructure is supported and maintained by our tremendous technology staff members, Babi Hammond and Dave Hodgins. They help keep Omeka running with the latest server technology and software updates. Throughout the year, Babi continued upgrading Omeka sites to bring them into compliance with HB-1110, the state accessibility law that went into effect on July 1, 2024. In August, Dave orchestrated a major infrastructure project, which involved moving our Omeka server with almost no downtime. Thank you, Babi and Dave!

Sharing & Learning

As of December 2024, our partners are sharing over 22,000 digital objects online through Omeka and 10,214 objects with the Digital Public Library of America through their participation in the Plains to Peaks Collective, the Colorado-Wyoming Hub of the DPLA. Their participation helps to make the PPC one of the largest hubs in the DPLA!

In addition to growing their digital collections, many of our partners are growing professionally through their participation in the Digital Collections Stewardship program. This 9-month experience takes members through the WebJunction Digital Collections Stewardship online course with support from peer learning groups and facilitators from Colorado State Library and Wyoming State Library. 

Looking Forward to 2025

I want to thank our current CVL Collections partners for their continued participation and support of the program. I look forward to seeing your collections grow and enrich your communities throughout 2025.

If you are interested in learning more about CVL Collections, please watch this short informational video or contact me with your questions at hitchner_a@cde.state.co.us. I look forward to hearing from you!