Information & Knowledge Centres

The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR)’s new photo archive project aims to bring a collection of 30,000 photos documenting the archaeological and cultural heritage of the Middle East to the public eye. But where do you even begin to digitize 30,000 slides, negatives, and prints? ACOR is one of the many diverse libraries who use Softlink’s Liberty library management system. In 2016 they were awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education through the competitive American Overseas Research Centers grant program which will support the ACOR Library Photographic Archive. As a guest blogger for Softlink, Corrie Commisso, Senior Archival Consultant for ACOR, shares her experiences with launching the digital archive project.

An increasing amount of content is originating in digital form. Many libraries are faced with the problem of assessing what born-digital content needs to be preserved, and how to manage that process.

Increasingly, new information is being created in digital format however there is still a significant amount of physical material, much of it fragile or vulnerable to damage, that can be converted to digital format.