Historic Clothing Collection

Since the inception of the Historic Clothing Collection, the primary method of locating or researching items has been a physical search utilizing hard copy descriptions of items, in three ring binders.  The 2017-2018 Digital Seed Grant (and library expertise) enabled the collection’s digital development through photography, garment metadata, digital inventory and a permanent website for the collection’s continued growth. This effort allows visual identification and study of the collection by the current MTSU community, community partners, and the public at large.

The Historic Clothing Collection (1790-1990) provides tremendous growth in learning opportunities for anyone studying historic clothing and accessories.  Several TXMD student assistants also worked on this project, which adds to their own digital learning. Additonally advantageous is the project’s contribution to the long-term preservation of the items in the MTSU collection, since garments can now be previewed before being removed from storage.

Collection available at http://dsi.mtsu.edu/clothing

Read more about the collection via the MTSU News article published October 2, 2018, the MTSU Sidelines news article publishing December 2018, or the one-page collection summary (PDF) available here.

Features

Features include photo zoom, viewing size (fits to browser, window or width), rotate, and download options. Enhanced features include the Side-by-Side View, linked metadata fields, and collection indexing for discoverabilty through search engines and databases.

Collection Staff

Grant Primary Investigator: Dr. Teresa King, TXMD Director, Dept. of Human Sciences, Middle Tennessee State University

Photographer: Rachael Krasnow, TXMD

Digital Curator (database, web design): Digital Scholarship Initaitives, Walker Library