Overview

The National Register of Historic Places is in the process of digitizing the National Register collection, which contains over a million pages of text and a million photographs on properties listed since 1966. The digitization standards we have relied on for guidance are those established by the National Archives and Records Administration. The master copies are kept as TIFFs while more compact formats optimized for web delivery are offered through Adobe Acrobat files (specifically JBIG2 for text and JPEG 2000 for photos). Currently we have completed digitization of Multiples Covers, NPS and GSA-owned properties, all National Historic Landmarks, the states of KY, PR, DC, HI, and the text of SC. Additionally all properties with an area of significance of Aviation or Ethnic Heritage have been digitized. We have also been able to "harvest" digital data from several State Historic Preservation Office initiatives. Beginning in fiscal year 2007 these subsets will begin to appear through NPS Focus, a National Park Service digital library solution. Our method includes digitizing the complete text of the nomination, making it full text searchable and digitizing all photographs. Web searches are made available by exporting selected data elements to a Dublin core based metadata model and allowing the user to navigate in NPS Focus from here to digitized images.

Status

Currently we are not 'based-funded' for this activity so we have much work ahead of us but we now have some digitized data on about 25% of listing. We hope to add to these efforts in the coming years and to continue to benefit from the many excellent efforts of our partners. A gateway to those efforts is available at SHPO inventories . We are available to discuss collaborative efforts with interested states, federal agencies and tribes. Feel free to contact the database manager to discuss.