Award-winning Preservation Effort Broadens Access To Library’s Archives

Project Recognized for Innovative Use of Digital Technology

Challenge

Not long after University of Virginia librarians developed an amazing treasure trove of documents into an exhibit, they realized that the hundreds of century-old documents demanded preservation. The documents detailed the tests of the U.S. Army's Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba at the turn of the 20th century. The archive contained the "who, what, when, where and why" of Walter Reed's Yellow Fever project, which not only proved that the disease was borne by mosquitoes, but also set the precedent of consent forms for medical test volunteers.

The university had received 147 boxes of notes on Walter Reed's work as a bequest from Philip S. Hench. Supplemented with other university-owned papers and Library of Congress material, they 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 with age, so the library needed to find a way to preserve them digitally. In addition, the library aimed to transcribe all handwritten material into print, and to make them available to scholars on the Internet...