While we’re sad that our initial cohort of digital library fellows will soon be leaving DLS, we’re proud of the excellent work they’ve done and the high quality digital collections they’ll be leaving behind. This week, we’re profiling Jill Wehrheim, who digitized almost 1600 pages from over a dozen items drawn from the Libraries’ holdings of Civil War diaries written by Iowa soldiers. Thanks to Jill’s efforts, these fragile, unique materials are now globally accessible, full-text searchable, and at decreased risk of damage from handling of the originals.

Name: Jill Wehrheim
Hometown: Red Bud, Illinois
Pre-SLIS education: Southeast Missouri State University – B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with emphases in English, history, and mass communications
DLS project: Civil War Diaries Digital Collection
Why did you choose this project? I have always been interested in history, especially the American Civil War, so this project matched my interests in history and digital libraries perfectly.
Most enjoyable project experience? I really enjoyed learning the basic process of how items go from sitting in boxes in Special Collections to being digitized and available online for anyone to view. I love the idea that by digitizing collections, we can make local items available for long-distance users.
Most difficult/challenging experience? The most challenging part of working on this project was beginning. It was difficult to narrow the scope to a manageable size for this semester.
What did you learn that surprised you? It was a little surprising to realize that digital library work is never truly finished. New items can always be added to the collection. This makes it harder to move on to other projects.
Favorite item in the collection? My current favorite digital object in my collection is Jacob Harrison Allspaugh’s 1862-1863 diary. On the last few pages of the diary, he had drawn four pictures.