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Friday, December 26, 2008
Ind. Gov't. - Yet more on "State group appears victor for Lincoln Museum items"
Updating this ILB entry from Dec. 13th, one of the deciding factors in Indiana's success in retaining the contents of the Lincoln Museum was reportedly the ability of the Allen County library to digitize documents. More about that today in this lengthy story reported by Angela Mapes Turner of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Some quotes:
Deep in the catacombs of the Allen County Library, in a darkened room, 10 black-cloaked “scribes” quietly pore over yellowed texts * * * .But these scribes aren’t people – they’re state-of-the-art scanning machines from non-profit Internet Archive, the library basement’s out-of-sight secret. The basement lab will play a vital role in digitizing the former Lincoln Museum collection for public access.
Though housed in the library, Internet Archive is an independent operation, part of a national network of scanning centers that put rare books and documents on the Internet for public consumption.
Each scribe in the archive is a high-tech scanner, with a glass overlay to hold books open. An operator raises and lowers the overlay using a foot pedal, allowing pages to be turned easily.
In Allen County, the operation is directed by Jeff Sharpe, an enthusiastic advocate of the archive project who gives off a professorial vibe in his tweed blazer and glasses.
The project got off the ground in Allen County through support of Microsoft, which launched a project to scan books and scholarly articles for posting online.
In May, Microsoft announced it would end its support of the project, and some in Allen County worried the project would end before it got off the ground.
But Microsoft donated the machines to the Allen County library – a setup worth about $1 million, Sharpe said – and the project continues.
Internet Archive has other regional scanning centers in Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Sharpe realizes Fort Wayne is playing in the big leagues. Other scanning centers are located in places such as the Library of Congress and the Princeton Theological Seminary.
That’s why he was so pleased by the announcement this month that the Fort Wayne center would help digitize the Lincoln Museum collection.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 26, 2008 01:56 PM
Posted to Indiana Government