Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

Make it this one
Tyhe New Yok Times has an incredible piece on digitisation of historial records which will I think put into perspective everyone’s thoughts on the subject. The money quotes:

At the Library of Congress, for example, despite continuing and ambitious digitization efforts, perhaps only 10 percent of the 132 million objects held will be digitized in the foreseeable future. For one thing, costs are prohibitive. Scanning alone on smaller items ranges from $6 to $9 for a 35-millimeter slide, to $7 to $11 a page for presidential papers, to $12 to $25 for poster-size pieces. (The cost of scanning an object can be a relatively minor part of the entire expense of digitizing and making an item accessible online.)

Similarly, at the National Archives, the repository for some nine billion documents, only a small fraction are likely to be digitized and put online. And at thousands of smaller, local collections around the country, the bulk of the material is languishing on yesterday’s media: paper, LPs, magnetic tape and film.

And:

Consider the Library of Congress archive of one million photo prints from The New York World-Telegram & Sun; only 5,407 have been digitized. Of the 1.2 million images from U.S. News and World Report, the library has digitized only 366. Its collection of five million images from Look magazine, spanning the period from 1937 to 1971, creates what Jeremy E. Adamson, director of collections and services at the library, calls “a fascinating portrait of America through photo stories on social and political subjects, personalities, food, fashion and sports.” Yet only 313 of those images have been digitized.

Yup, its well worth the reading time invested!
Eoin