Geotagging Digital Collections: BeaverTracks Mobile Project

BeaverTracks Historical Locations and Walking Tour is a mobile project at Oregon State University (OSU), where the author serves as programmer/analyst. It connects the past to the present by linking historic images to current campus locations. The goal of BeaverTracks is to showcase and bring attention to OSU Libraries' digital collections as well as to provide a new approach for connecting with current students, staff, parents, alumni, and the local community. Even though images can be seen as perpetually static components, they are inherently tied to a time and location in history. BeaverTracks opens a window to the past through the use of emerging mobile technologies and third-party APIs. Capitalizing on the mobile user's context, BeaverTracks adds location-based access to the digital collections and provides "in-situ" learning that was not present before. The BeaverTracks project shows that geotagging digital collections can be a low-cost endeavor and can provide a new interface to these underused resources.