The archive, LC’s first major digital acquisition of September 11 materials, also serves as the Smithsonian Institution’s designated repository for digital objects related to the attacks. LC plans to continue adding new materials submitted by CUNY/GMU project managers to the archive, which is currently 50 gigabytes in size.
“Our mission is to collect and preserve” as many digital images as possible of people’s reactions to the events, GMU Assistant Professor of History Tom Scheinfeldt said in the September 4 New York Times. “To have this kind of material, from a historian’s point of view, is just exhilarating.”
To celebrate the acquisition, the library is hosting a day-long symposium in its Coolidge Auditorium September 10 that explores the use of digital materials in the writing of history, in particular for interpreting the history of September 11.
Posted September 8, 2003.