Part 3 Selection

A. Material selected for PA-22924-97

All images selected for project PA-22924-97 met the broad collection categories laid out in the grant application or subsequent project modifications that were approved by NEH. For highlights from the processed material, please see our collection detail pages: W. H. Jackson, Aultman & Garrison, Tintypes, Ambrotypes and Daguerreotypes, Photograph albums, H. H. Buckwalter, Horace Poley, and Harry Rhoads.

We are often asked how we select materials for inclusion in our digital collection.  When we first began submitting grants for the digitization program, we were asked to justify our selections by proving the national significance of the material or its usefulness to a target audience. 

Other criteria used to decide which images to scan and catalog included:

• Copyright/Public Domain status
• Researcher or customer demand
• Preservation needs
• Historic significance
• Technical considerations (for example, until recently, we did not have scanning equipment that allowed us to capture images for bound and oversize items.  We were unable, therefore, to select these items even when they met our other criteria.)

Today, we continue to use all of these criteria.  Some criteria, such as copyright status, have become increasingly important as our understanding of legal issues surrounding internet publication has increased.  Others, such as technical considerations, have decreased as we have expanded our lab equipment.

In addition to these criteria we have begun to consider:

• How does the proposed material complement/compare to other material already in the database?
• How does the proposed material complement/compare to material on other web sites?
• How does the proposed material compare with other items in our Western History Collection?