Photographs like this one taken in southern New Mexico around 1880 by E.A. Bass are part of the buried treasures in New Mexico libraries and archives. It is these historic treasures that Nancy Dennis and Camila Alire want to bring to your desktop computer.
Dennis, Assistant Dean of Collections and Technology Services, and University Libraries Dean Alire are the co-principal investigators for a two year, $377,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The grant will allow University of New Mexico Libraries to lead an effort to build a regional web site called the Rocky Mountain Online Archive. Colorado and Wyoming are already working with UNM to bring community history in those states online. As the project grows, the principal investigators hope more states in the region will participate.
The goal is to scan and digitize thousands of historical documents that build the history of communities in the Rocky Mountains, then arrange the documents into a system that will make is possible for scholars and researchers to look back in time, using images of the actual documents.
Dennis says, “This project allows the mining of primary resources that have been stored in the recesses of libraries and archives around the west.” Four institutions in New Mexico are already participating in an online archive system at http://elibrary.unm.edu/oanm/
Anyone can browse through the archives and see some of the original documents available in the Center for Southwest Research in Zimmerman Library at UNM, the Fray Angelico Chávez History Library in the Palace of the Governors, the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, and the Rio Grande Historical Collection at New Mexico State University.
The project will fund the digitization of materials and training for archivists and staff in the technical means to scan and maintain digital collections. Dennis says thousands of photographs and documents will be added to the online archive over the next two years.
The goal is to increase remote access to historical documents and information to support scholarship and research, education and information. The jewels of these unique historical collections will be available to historians, students and scholars who can make ‘virtual’ visits to these cultural institutions.
For more information about the project, please contact Nancy Dennis at (505) 277-2585 or ndennis@unm.edu.
Contact: Karen Wentworth (505) 277-5627
Posted by kwentworth at June 18, 2004 09:59 AM