Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian
Building the Digital Collection
Northwestern University Library received an award in the 1997-98 round of the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library competition to support the digitization of all 2,228 of the photogravure images from Edward S. Curtis 20 volume set along with individual plates in portfolios. The set is held in the Northwestern University McCormick Library of Special Collections; the project was coordinated by staff in the library's Preservation Department, and descriptive records were created by staff in the Catalog Department. Scanning was outsourced to JJT Inc. of Austin, Texas. Image files and descriptive records were delivered to the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress mounted the image files and converted the descriptive records to a form for indexing with InQuery to allow full integration into American Memory.
The web pages listed below provide more detail on different aspects of building this digital collection.
Following the creation of this digital collection for the Library of Congress, Northwestern University Library mounted the full text of Curtis's publication, incorporating all images shown on this site, with funding from IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services). For details on that project (2001-2004), see Edward S. Curtis's "The North American Indian" [digital edition].