#ColorOurCollections is a fun opportunity for libraries, special collections, archives, and other cultural institutions to share their collections with a wide audience and promote their institutions. We hope you join us!
Participation is simple: share images from your collection for coloring on social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections. Institutions can design their own coloring sheets and books or use the #ColorOurCollections templates provided on the Tools and Resources page.
Just about every library should have images suitable for coloring. The best images to use are simple with little shading. Early printed books and other historical materials are an excellent source of these kinds of illustrations, but #ColorOurCollections content has been sourced from manuscripts, patents, design books, book covers, mosaics, stained glass, and more. The diversity of the content shared is one of the best parts of the campaign! Image selection is up to the institution, but we do ask that participating institutions adhere to copyright restrictions and avoid content that might be considered offensive or controversial. If you have questions about content selection or any other aspect of the campaign, please get in touch at colorourcollections@gmail.com.
Coloring content should follow digital best practices. While the content institutions share through their own channels can be in any format, for inclusion on the #ColorOurCollections website submissions must be a PDF. Files should not be too large (less than 15MB for the #ColorOurCollections website) and should have descriptive file names identifying the institution (e.g. institutionname_coloringsheettitle.pdf). If there is any embedded metadata, that should also be meaningful.
Participating institutions are encouraged to provide as much information about the source of their images as possible. Though not required, blog posts are a great place to post your coloring content and expand upon it! At the bare minimum, please clearly identify the image source on the coloring sheet.