In 1991, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received a collection of nearly 500 Central European posters dating from 1920 to 1991. They belonged to Dr. Winters, a former history professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His wife, a native Czech, was a librarian with an enthusiasm for the visual arts. Together, they travelled extensively, collecting posters of museums, castle, concerts, and festivals. The posters have been divided into categories: Artistic, Individual Artists/Personalities, Alphonse Mucha, Tourist, Nature, and Political, Technical, Children, Folk Art, and Cultural and Political.
Steps to digitize the collection didn't take place until 13 years later. Personnel at the Slavic and East European Library consulted staff in Preservation and Conservation, University Archives, and the Digital Services and Development Department to assess the needs of the physical collection as well as the construction of a database, converting the finding aid using EAD, and the selection of a metadata scheme. The scanning of the posters was carried out by the Digital Services librarians. Due to the nature of the posters, the Visual Resources Association Core Categories, version 3.0, was selected as librarians felt this scheme best represented and described the collection.
One aspect of this project that became very complicated was the issue of copy right. Librarians and graduate assistants drafted a general permissions letter, which was then translated into Czech. The letter was then sent to prospective copy right holders in both English and Czech. However, this was very problematic because the rights holder was rarely located. Thus, the collection is password protected.
For more information, visit http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx/winters/Overview.htm
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