WUWM has been accepted into the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) in partnership with WGBH and the Library of Congress.
With 60 years of recordings from WUWM, which includes the first anniversary special of WUWM, election coverage throughout the years, the Jeffrey Dahmer trial, member drives, the Chancellor’s Roundtable/ Report, all of the episodes of At Ten and Lake Effect, and other award-winning reports about the Milwaukee community on different types of physical media – reel to reel tape, carts, mini disc, CD and zip disk – this was a big task that required an incredible team.
WUWM was thrilled to work with Ann Hanlon, the head of digital collections and initiatives, and Shiraz Bhathena, digital archivist, at the UWM Library to set up the forms, training and quality control measures so that over 150 volunteers could come into the station to help catalog and pack 6,000 individual pieces of our region’s history to be digitized, saving them from media degradation and eventual loss.
Once these media are digitized, they will be sent to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting at the Library of Congress, making WUWM the first content from Milwaukee to live on for future generations at the AAPB. The UWM Archive will also get a copy of the digitized files.
Thanks to the partnership between the AAPB, WGBH the UWM Library and legal team, and the many volunteers who helped to catalog the many pieces of fragile physical media, the stories and audio that have been produced over the last 60 years at WUWM will be available to search at the Library of Congress and UWM Archive.
