“150 Years After Lincoln Assassination, Massive Online Archive in the Works”

From Computerworld/IDG News Service:

As the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination approaches, a massive digital archive is in the works that will be home to more than 100,000 documents related to the Civil War-era commander-in-chief.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and it is co-sponsored by the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois Springfield and the Abraham Lincoln Association. The project is dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime.
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To date, the the project has collected 99,525 documents, of which more than 67,000 have been stored on about 40TB of storage on servers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The archive is expected to grow by another 50% over the next five years, and storage vendor Iron Mountain will eventually take over the data storage requirements when the archive is completed.
Stacy Pratt McDermott, assistant director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, said  the university is now allowing public access to the digitalized documents through a temporary website that offers few features. When the project is completed in two to four years, a more sophisticated site will offer acedemic researchers and history buffs in-depth search features.

Read the Complete Article (with a Few Collection Highlights)
See Also: Iron Mountain and the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Partner to Preserve the Writings of One of America’s Most Beloved Presidents

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