User:Sapeko



Introduction

For decades, historians have relied on archival material gathered from physical archives, boxes of letters, files, microfilm, and records, to help fill in chronological gaps. Numerous historical societies and organizations have made historical records available to the public, but access to information they may be recovered because of time or money constraints.



Websites now provide access to hundreds newspaper articles which would have been typically only available on microfilm. In addition, the internet has made census records, death records, and even public directories available at someone's fingertip. This change allows greater access to materials, no more wait time for orders to be sent through interlibrary loan or having to travel to a physical location. Researchers, as well as those who are just curious, can view original content just by a click of a button.



But, this transition also brings with it concerns. Organizations who store historical content must decide which records to scan in and post, and the cost of importation hinders organizations from scanning in content. Everything cannot be available online, but a lot is. Because of this gap, many researchers do not know what is already available online and what is not. This wiki will service as an online catalog for digital archives, and hopefully, inspire additions to the list.



Sections



Collaborative Online Archives 

Ancestry Publishing began publishing content in 1983, originally publishing history magazines and genealogy reference books. But, as more content became available online, the publishing company decided to adopt another enterprise. By 2002 the organization had one billion subscribers. To help provide the content, the website adopted a system of enabling individuals to populate the website with their own records. Collective archiving has been adopted by historians as well to allow professionals to share their findings. New York Journalism Professor, Brooke Kroeger's database that contains a collection of investigative newspaper articles, spanning from the 19th century to today. Kroeger provides her email address in her "about" page to allow others to contribute to the site.



Expertly Curated Online Archives

Chronicling America online is a byproduct of a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Funded by the federal government, educational institutions across the nation may receive grant funding for digitizing content kept in files.



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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:12px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;">Some sites provide information that would have required in previous years international travel to access. Military archives provides documents of many battles fought in Ireland, including World War II battle plans, map, and other content.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:12px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(16,16,16);">How you can help!

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:12px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(16,16,16);">Many organizations list on their site that the majority of their content is only available at the location. You can help the digitization process evolve by making archival material available online by linking to organizations with digital archives.

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