Innodata Isogen Spearheads Award-Winning Digitization Project

Library Archive Project Recognized for Innovative Use of Digital Technology

Challenge

University of Virginia librarians reviewed hundreds of century-old writings while creating an exhibit a few years ago. The archive documented the Yellow Fever project, headed by Major Walter Reed, MD, in Cuba at the turn of the 20th century. The project was considered significant for proving that the disease was borne by mosquitoes and because it set the precedent for requiring consent forms for medical test volunteers.

The university previously received 147 boxes of materials on the Yellow Fever project as a bequest. Supplemented with other university-owned papers and Library of Congress content, the bequest materials represented the core of the Yellow Fever exhibit that opened to the public in 1997. The collection’s 13,007 pages of handwritten letters and envelopes, news clippings and books with handwritten notes scribbled in the margins were crumbling and fading.

The library needed to digitally preserve this important archive, including the transcription of all handwritten material, so it would be easily available to scholars online.