Originally Posted by
gugie
Maybe you should consider breaking this project into more bite sized bits.
The first priority, I would think, is to get everything scanned. Volunteers could do that with their own equipment, no need to buy any. There could be some quality control, volunteers again could check to make sure the scan was up to some standard.
You don't need your own server. Heck, most companies don't have any of their own, it's all "in the cloud". A terabyte is cheap nowadays. A quick search shows me that Google charges as low as about a penny a month per GB storage.
I know that doesn't make it accessible. But at least it preserves it. That should be your first priority.
Find people willing to take a box and get it all scanned. Agree to a standard format. You can even get it indexed for searchability. There is scanning software with OCR that will convert the scanned pictures into text and index everything for you. It's not perfect, but type in "Ritchey", and it'll find 99% of the documents that have Ritchey on it, with links.
None of this would cost you a single penny - a year's storage could be paid for by passing a hat at Sunshine Bicycles on a Saturday afternoon out of pocket change.
Building a searchable website would just require someone willling to put in the time to do it. This very website is run by volunteers, methinks. I'm sure they would be happy to give you free advice.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think this is doable. Send me a box, I'd scan it. I'd pay for shipping both directions as well. I'd bet you'd get a lot others to do the same, and a whole ton of 'em would drive over to your place and do the same. You'd probably want to vet them to make sure they don't run off with your historical documents, but that's doable.
I think you're right, Gugie, that there is probably a pretty strong potential community who would support the development of the archive, and could probably keep it running for a few years. I know that if I lived in CA I'd be chomping at the bit to try to get involved. However, as a librarian in charge of an archives, I understand a sober and conservative approach to preserving historical documents and ensuring the project's longevity. Especially if the goal is to develop a general bicycling digital repository, which is a pretty big goal. And while its super cool and encouraging if volunteers want to scan documents on their own machines, it makes me cringe to think of the amount of oversight and quality control that will be required, never mind interviews, outreach, and project management. That much processing is really only feasible with a very strict and standardized workflow, and specialized equipment and software.
It's been the plight of librarians and archivists in recent years to constantly need to defend their spending budgets because users don't realize just what licensing, data hosting, equipment costs, man hours, etc., actually cost, and how much time it takes to process 150 square feet of documents. There are a lot of ways to alleviate these costs that have become standard practice, such as grant funding, internships, volunteer hours, partnerships, etc. There's probably a foundation or government fund that would be able to contribute to this.
In fact, that's something I'd like to see from the project managers: have they considered the traditional means of getting funded? Is there a professional archivist working on this project?