Simple Digital History

Digital history can be complicated and expensive work. High impact collections from libraries, museums and university require consistent sources of money and personnel. Take for example the massive collection of materials from American Memory. This effort began in 1994 with a 13 million dollar grant to fund the National Digital Library. Over the next six years, almost 60 million dollars in public and private funds poured into develop the 9 million document digital collection. While impressive, the cost per digitized item at American Memory is quite high - 9 million items at a cost of 60 million dollars is about $6.50 per item. Compare this cost to what a motivate individual with a low cost camera and access to historical resources can do. An good example of what one motivated individual can do is the work of Zachary Forest Johnson at indiemaps.com.blog where posts include scans from books and other resources. This example from Johnson reviews the history of thematic maps.

This simple approach to digital history could result in hundreds of millions of digitized resources. In our work at North Carolina State, students use their cell phones and digital cameras to digitize materials. This project from Candice Gilliland features images from a 1924 NC State record keeping book.



Another of our efforts is to digitize materials that are available from public archives using low-cost or free resources. We are currently digitizing telegram memos written by Abraham Lincoln from March 10, 1864 to April 12, 1865. Right now these telegrams are housed at Footnote.com. Our total cost to date for this project -

$60.00 for an annual subscription to Footnote (temporary storage, also on lower cost server for example at http://lincolntelegrams.com/images/telegrams/64-03/)
$90.00 for the telegrams from the National Archives
$0.00 for digitization and transcription (students)
$0.00 for equipment (public library)

Total - $150.00, which results in a cost per item of less than 50 cents per item. If we had forgone Footnote (an option for future projects) our cost will be about 40 cents per items. Ultimately, we want to accomplish a zero cost model. Eliminating access costs to resources relies on individuals accessing personal collections.