Yale University: Library Digitizes Holocaust Testimonies

From the Yale Daily News:

Yale University Library is in the midst of the digitization of the Fortunoff Video Archive’s roughly 4500 testimonies from the Holocaust, many of survivors, without which the testimonies would soon become inaccessible.
The machines that play the 13,000 one-hour tapes in the Fortunoff Archive, which was officially acquired by the University in 1981 but received a large donation to its endowment fund from Alan Fortunoff in 1987, are no longer in production, so the transition to a digital format is essential for preservation, said Joanne Rudof, archivist for the Fortunoff Archive. Rudof added that digitization will allow researchers to access the archive remotely in place of having to go to the Sterling Memorial Library to watch a physical tape.
“People all over the world are waiting for access to this,” Rudof said.
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Rudof said the initiative “dwarfs” any other digitization project on campus since most collections have only text or still images and require less storage space. Rudof said she estimates that 2,600 digitized of the 13,000 have been digitized already, though none of the digitized material will be available to researchers until whole project is complete.

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See Also: Direct to Fortunoff Video Archive Web Site

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Digital Preservation, Libraries, News, Preservation