JFK Library Brings History Online

JFK Library Brings History Online

Being Canadian and all I am not exactly an expert on US history, but my understanding is that there was a President that was slightly popular at one time with the initials JFK. Since I am always fascinated by interesting scanning projects, I took notice of the huge Access To A Legacy project at the JFK Library.

The library teamed up with AT&T, Iron Mountain, Raytheon, and EMC to put together the archive, with the project starting in 2006.

To start its online archive, The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library chose to digitize its six, most important collections. These include the President’s White House office files, his personal papers, outgoing letters, and the photos, videos and audio recorded during his time in the White House. More than 200,000 documents, 300 audiotapes, 72 film reels and 1,500 photos from these collections are now available online. The contents here include a veritable highlight reel of Kennedy’s life and presidency. Students, teachers, researchers and members of the public can now go online to see President Kennedy’s inaugural address; or to watch him debate President Nixon; or to hear him challenge America to land first on the moon; and more.

If you want to check out the archive, go to the Digital Archive Section.

In case you are wondering where this data actually sits, here is what Iron Mountain has to say (note: I don’t think it is actually inside a mountain made of iron, which would be pretty cool):

The library found this home in a sprawling former limestone mine located 200 feet below farms and rolling countryside in Western Pennsylvania. It is the Iron Mountain Underground, a high-security bunker for millions of government records, business documents, historical and pop culture treasures, as well as petabytes of emails, medical images and other digital files.
This 1000-acre facility operates like a city underground, featuring backup power for seven days, its own water treatment plant, two fire trucks and around-the-clock armed security.

You can see more about the archive by watching this Youtube video:

Now.. who did it, the mob or the CIA? Discuss in the comments.

(Photo by ReneS)

About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

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