You may have noticed that WiLS has some new faces among its staff. We are excited to grow our skills and improve our services by bringing new members into our team. In the coming months, we will be sharing a little more about each WiLS staff member, both new and experienced, in their own words.
In late 2017, we added Vicki Tobias to our family as Program Coordinator for the IMLS-funded Curating Community Digital Collections project, headed up by Recollection Wisconsin.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was born in Arkansas and moved around as part of a military family for the first decade + of my life. I’ve lived a bunch of cool places but I’m an upper Midwest girl at heart and have called Madison “home” since 1999. Like many, I moved here for graduate school and never left. I have a BA in History from the University of Nebraska, a second BA in Chinese Language & Literature from the University of Washington, and completed my MLS degree at UW-Madison in 2003. In Madison, I’ve worked for the library-archives division at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the UW Digital Collections Center, and the UW-Madison Archives.
Besides working for WiLS and Recollection Wisconsin, I’m helping to build an army of highly skilled, kick-ass, next-gen information professionals at the UW-Madison iSchool. As a part-time instructor for the iSchool, I teach courses in the Archives track, a foundation technology course, and a short course focused on genealogy for librarians. I also started my own historical research business in 2016 – Tobias History Research. So, a little teaching, a little research, a little consulting work. I juggle a few different roles, but I really love what I do. If I can make even a small impact – leave this world slightly better than when I arrived – I’m content.
A lifelong bookworm, I try to manage multiple titles simultaneously. Fiction, non-fiction, U.S. and Russian history, contemporary issues and more. Summer shenanigans include hiking, kayaking, long bike rides, live music (outdoors is better), grillin’ out, and quality patio time with dogs, friends, and neighbors. Colder weather inspires cross-country skiing, winter hikes, a tall stack of books, and new tunes. I recently took up the bass guitar. I play a mean Eagles bass line. Other stuff I love unconditionally? My family (of course), my silly dogs – Peppi and Diego, growing things in my yard, our exceptional national parks and forests, excessively spicy Thai or Indian food, Madmen (best series finale ever), autumn “up north”, historical reenactments, podcasts on a road trip (Pod Save America!), and truly unplugging on vacation. Croatia and Nova Scotia are on my travel bucket list.
What do you do in your role at WiLS?
I am thrilled to serve as the program coordinator for Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC), a two-year IMLS-funded digital preservation initiative which officially launched on December 1, 2018. Alongside WiLS and Recollection Wisconsin‘s Emily Pfotenhauer, I work with staff at small and mid-sized libraries and cultural heritage organizations, graduate students in the library schools at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, professional mentors and expert instructors to help plan and carry out digital curation projects in communities across the state.
This unique and collaborative initiative provides UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee iSchool graduate students with practical, hands-on experience through summer fieldwork positions. This year, we have six project teams comprised of a graduate student, professional mentor, and a host site supervisor. Each team works together to complete a digital preservation project. The projects differ depending on an institution’s collection focus and/or specific preservation needs but our goal is to provide a strong foundation for institutions to continue this preservation work beyond the summer term. Teams will develop digital preservation workflows and policies based on training received during our Immersion Workshop earlier this spring. In 2019, CCDC will expand the initiative to ten project teams.
Curating Community Digital Collections is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program and is coordinated by the Recollection Wisconsin collaborative statewide digital program.
Why did you make the decision to do this job?
One of the most rewarding aspects of my career has been mentoring future information professionals, as a student supervisor for various UW-Madison General Library System positions but also in my role as an instructor and advisor for the UW-Madison iSchool. I’m excited to have an opportunity to do so, again, and am honored to be taking on this role for WiLS and Recollection Wisconsin. I was also really excited by the opportunity to work with some truly exceptional human beings at WiLS and Recollection Wisconsin.
If money or capacity were no concern, what WiLS service would you implement or expand?
Ooo…great question! I’d love to help small and/or under-resourced libraries and/or cultural heritage institutions in Wisconsin develop, manage, and improve public access to their local history collections by sharing archival best practices and workflows. Doing so would better prepare them to embark on digitization or digital preservation projects.
I’d also like to build stronger relationships between these type of institutions and the two iSchool programs in Wisconsin (UW-Madison iSchool and UW-Milwaukee SOIS) in hopes of pairing graduate students, especially distance education students, seeking practicum experience working in an archives environment with institutions who need archival assistance. Both programs offer practicum or fieldwork opportunities for their graduate students and, in fact, the iSchool requires their students to complete 120 hours of fieldwork prior to graduation. I’d love to help develop more archives-related practicum opportunities for our graduate students throughout the state.
These could even be two components of a larger project or program – placing Wisconsin iSchool graduate students in small, under-resourced institutions across the state to help develop and implement archival best practices and workflows that improve collection development, access, and preservation work.
What are you listening to or watching or reading right now that’s making you think?
I’m on a podcast kick this year. My current favorites include Crooked Media stuff, This American Life, Reply All, Endless Thread, Code Switch, and WTF with Marc Maron.
What am I watching? The Handmaid’s Tale, The Good Place (so funny!), The Great British Baking Show, Babylon Berlin and Westworld. I’m looking forward to the return of Man in the High Tower and The Crown.
Reads? My coffee table stack includes Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, Warlight: A Novel by Michael Ondaatje, and Manhattan Beach with Jennifer Egan.
I had the good fortune to discover the Blue Ox Music Festival in Eau Claire this summer. Some exceptional bluegrass pickin’ in a truly extraordinary setting. I’ll be back! Other current favorites include the Infamous Stringdusters, Janelle Monae, Greta Van Fleet, St. Vincent and Father John Misty. Who makes me think? DeRay McKesson, Ronan Farrow, Kendrick Lamar, Paul Krugman, Jason Kander, Roxane Gay, Malcolm Gladwell…just to name a few.
Vicki is awesome. Want to connect with her about a potential project or idea that’s floating around? You can! Send her an email at vicki@wils.org.