Chad Hutchens
Head of Digital Collections
University of Wyoming
Academic libraries and museums are increasingly collaborating on digitization, metadata aggregation, and data management to offer access to objects that rarely see the light of day in many small museums. The University of Wyoming Libraries and the UW Geological Museum have been working together to make physical objects (largely vertebrate fossils) available in 3D formats to anyone with an internet connection. Despite an incredible lack of standards and best practices, we have learned not only how to digitize fossil objects (large and small) in 3D, but also how to offer online access to these objects as well as how to archive them for future use.