Since Rosenzweig published his textbook, digitizing historic resources was beginning to get easier and less expensive. Ten years later, I can only imagine that the process of digitizing collections may have gotten even less expensive. Technology has developed and gotten cheaper and more widespread. There are many more people that are knowledgeable in how to use the necessary technology to digitize records. The Smithsonian Institute has started using crowd sourcing in order to find volunteers to assist with the monumental task of digitizing their collections. Here is an example of one of their ongoing projects transcribing a field journal in California and Nebraska.
There are other projects attempting to digitize books, like the Gutenberg Project, which digitizes books whose copyrights have expired. LibriVox is a project whose goal is to create recorded audio for books with expired copyrights. Each project uses volunteer work and crowd sourcing to grow and expand their collections.
For my project I will primarily be working with the collections at the Thomas Balch Library. This is a small local history and genealogical library owned and operated by the City of Leesburg, Virginia. The Balch Library has a lot of searchable databases on their website, as well as many digitized documents. At no charge, they offer access to many other online databases to assist with your personal research. They have many excellent maps of the area going all the way back to the 18th century. Unfortunately not many of these maps have been digitized, but are available for viewing at the library. The time and technology needed to digitize these large maps (such as those used for the St. Petersburg Map projects) may be too expensive for the Balch. However, there are many diaries, letters, deeds, wills, and other historic documents that could benefit from being digitized.
I'll be using as many resources as possible for my research on the Grubbs farm ruins in Hamilton, Virginia. I hope that I'm able to find some photos, maps, or other visual resources that have been digitized. Mostly, I hope to see if there are any resources I can help digitize myself!
Just wanted to point out that you have access to a lot of databases via the NVCC library also, and you have access to historical newspapers like the Washington Post. While it is not very likely that you'll find info in the old Post about the Grubbs farm or family, you might, and it's worth a quick check. At least you might find obits.
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