PROJECT METHODOLOGY

Ollie Atkins was a well-regarded magazine and White House photographer from the 1940s through the 1970s. Though an "adopted son" of Northern Virginia, his photographer's beat covered Washington and the world: Atkins' camera could always be found at the center of national and world events. After his death in 1977, his widow, Marjorie Atkins donated his collection of photographs, negatives, and contact sheets to the George Mason University Libraries in 1987. The donation included copyright of the images.

The Atkins Collection has always been among the very best housed in Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) in the GMU Libraries. Numbering over 57,000 images, inventorying and preserving the Collection began soon after it was donated. Use of the Collection, however, was limited to individual requests for copies of images. Wide-scale reproduction and distribution of images was impossible until the advent of computer digitization and Internet distribution. After the development of these two complimentary technologies, reproduction and distribution became possible on a scale never before imagined.

Two other related opportunities occurred. First, the GMU Libraries (along with the University) quickly understood the potentialities of the new technology for disseminating information. Resources were provided to SC&A to set up a program, through which collections began to be digitized. (To gain access to these collections, visit http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/digitize.html.) Second, the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), which is Virginia's state-wide electronic information consortium linking university and college libraries, generously provided resources to digitize and electronically distribute important collections, especially image collections.

The Atkins Collection was an obvious choice to digitize because Atkins was a Virginian and because the images were historically significant. It was also an appropriate time to digitize images from the collection because SC&A's staff had perfected digitizing techniques and organizational procedures by digitizing other collections.

Several decisions and steps followed:

• Because of the vast number of images in the collection, only a representative selection could be digitized.

• Relying on years of staff experience in working with the Collection, "core" persons and themes were emphasized, eventually these included ten categories, five U.S. Presidents and five subject areas. These were altered slightly after the review of the images had been completed.

• Images were selected for their historical importance and/or aesthetic qualities.

• As many images as possible in the Collection were reviewed for digitizing, eventually nearly all the images (approximately 50,000) were, in fact, examined.

• SC&A always shapes its projects in such a way that they support GMU's curriculum. In this case, three graduate students from the history department were awarded internships to participate in the project. Under the daily direction of SC&A's staff, they learned principles of selecting important historical documents for publication (digitizing and distributing images on the Internet is a modern form of sophisticated publishing); mastered contemporary Internet publishing techniques; became skilled in formally presenting the results to graduate students and faculty; established and maintained a scholarly production team; learned image collection management; and preserved images.

A project like this is never really completed. It is now at the stage where it becomes part of SC&A's normal program activities.