Alexander Street Press

In April, I was introduced to Alexander Street Press, a company that is digitizing content in order to create databases in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. They are currently offering free access to the American Civil War Online series of databases until June 30, 2008. You can view images from the Civil War, unit rosters and more. [I search the rosters for "hurst" and received 920 hits. I wonder if any were connected with my family?]

On a conference call last week, the topic was raised of purchasing content to complement a digitization program. Purchasing content may help an institution round-out its offering and provide missing information. It might also be cost effective (depending on the license) as a way of expanding a digital collection. Just as libraries purchase databases from EBSCO and Gale to supplement there print collections, some might purchase databases to supplement their digital/digitized collection.

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Technorati tag: Digitization