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Preservation
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Preservation
Digital Technology

Digitization offers powerful opportunities in the preservation of library collections. Facsimiles of fragile graphic material can be browsed without disturbing the originals. Access to digital files is potentially much more flexible than conventional, linear-oriented reformatting options such as microfilm..

Since 1995, the Preservation Department has worked with various collection managers at Northwestern University Library to scan selected primary resource materials for the digital collections listed below. In collaboration with staff in cataloging, information systems, and digital media, we have worked to develop metadata and web interfaces to improve access to lesser- known library resources. A future challenge will be the preservation of these and many “born digital” assets.

Digital Collections and Current Projects

Building History: Northwestern University

To commemorate Northwestern's 2001 Sesquicentennial anniversary, many images and some documentation chronicling the origins and history of various buildings on Northwestern’s Evanston and Chicago campuses were digitized. An online exhibit has been mounted by the University Archives, and a more complete image database is planned.

Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian

In 2001, a grant from IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) enabled the library to digitize the full twenty volumes of narrative text published by Edward S. Curtis between 1907-1930. The lesser-known text will be integrated with the well known photogravure images already scanned for the Library of Congress project, through a site to be mounted on Northwestern Library’s server in 2004. The publication will be presented as page images plus searchable, uncorrected OCR marked up using the TEI standard.

Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images

In 1998, Northwestern received a Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library award to scan all 2,222 photogravure plates from a set of the twenty- volume publication and accompanying portfolios held in the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections. The indexed images are mounted as a collection within the American Memory web site.

League of Nations Documents

Under a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services completed in 2001, over 250 titles (49,000 pages) of significant documents and reference works issued by the League of Nations between the two World Wars, including reports related to disarmament, The Statistical Yearbook, and The Armaments Yearbook, have been digitized. The documents are indexed by title and series, and presented in PDF format with page facsimiles and searchable text from uncorrected OCR.

Posters from the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies

This represents the first phase of a project to digitize the extensive collection of posters documenting various African protest and political movements, including the Anti-Aparthied movement in South Africa. The database currently contains 77 digitized posters, with nearly 200 additional records to be added in 2004.

Siege and Commune of Paris

As a participant in the Research Libraries Group (RLG) Digital Image Access Project (DIAP) in the early 1990’s, Northwestern Library converted over 1,200 rare albumen photographs and caricatures from a collection documenting the 1870-71 Siege and Commune of Paris. Indexing for the database includes names of persons, places and buildings.

World War II Poster Collection

This popular web database presents over 300 images of World War II posters collected and preserved by the library's Government Publications Department. Issued by various government agencies from 1941-1945, the posters range in size from broadsides to banners. They were photographed first, then scanned from film negatives. Access is through individual records with subject headings and descriptions, linked to screen-sized images.

Pilot Projects

African Newspapers--Ivoire Dimanche

In order to explore digital conversion of microfilm and Web delivery of illustrated African newspapers, issues of Ivoire Dimanche from 1973-75 were scanned. Exploration continues on optimal means of presenting both the facsimile images and indexed content.

Herskovits Archives, Selected Correspondence

Over 1500 pages of correspondence to the late Northwestern anthropologist Melville Herskovits from important African-American cultural leaders, including W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham and others, as well as various anthropologists Franz Boas, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Margaret Mead. PDF files will be linked from an online version of the archival finding aid.