Digitizing the Lincoln Administration

Among the many websites and digital projects bringing the 19th century to the World Wide Web is the Lincoln Archives Digital Project from researcher Karen Needles. This ambitious project began in 2002 with the goal of digitizing all federal records from the Lincoln administration, including every cabinet and every agency. The project is the first of its kind to digitize the holdings of an entire administration and its standards are high. The project uses high resolution scans of original documents from the National Archives and incorporates technology such as “Zoomify” to create a high quality and easily accessible collection.

The project is not limited to just federal documents and includes maps, newspapers, photographs, political cartoons, blogs, lesson plans and even a dictionary and who’s who of the period. The wealth of information is seemingly endless and is always growing, although a subscription is required for full access to the project. For more information, check out the project and the August article about it in Civil War News.