ALPLM Launches Digitizing Project with State Grant

By Benjamin Cox on August 31, 2021 at 9:43am

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is launching a new project to digitize thousands of related images and documents.

Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Illinois State Library, Lincoln Library officials will be scanning and digitizing everything from rare and delicate photos of Lincoln to posters, memorabilia, and letters.

Library spokesperson Chris Wills says the extensive project will cover several hundred items: “What’s really going to be special about this is it will be provided in such high resolution – 600 DPI. When someone downloads one of these, they will be able to see it basically the same way they would see it here at the library in person looking at these documents with their own eyes. We’ve got, of course, just pictures of the president but also hundreds of posters related to him. For instance, the Wanted poster, the reward poster that was put out after his death and then all kinds of memorabilia produced over the years.”

Wills says the project will likely take library personnel a couple of years to complete. The images will be available to the public on the Illinois Digital Archives’ website at idaillinois.org.