Searching JFK’s Digital Archive

Update: The History Channel has decided not to air the television series, The Kennedys:

The groundbreaking initiative we are announcing today is the first of its kind in the nation…Because of this historical initiative, millions of documents, miles of film, and hundreds of thousands of photographs from President Kennedy’s administration will be scanned, digitized, indexed and permanently preserved. More importantly, they will be available to all citizens of the world – not just the scholars and researchers who make the journey to Boston.

— Senator Edward M. Kennedy, June 9, 2006

The John F. Kennedy Library unveiled its digital archive that includes over 200,000 pages, 300 reels of audio tape containing over 1,245 individual recordings of telephone conversations, speeches and meetings, 300 museum artifacts, 72 reels of moving images and 1,500 photos that have been digitized, described and loaded electronically.

Selection

The JFK Library digitiziation initiative focuses on large scale digitization.  We digitize entire collections from start to finish rather than choosing only the portions that we judge to be the most interesting or important. Selection, therefore, occurs at the collection level. Though our long term goal is to digitize all of the Library’s holdings, we are starting with the collections that are most central to the mission of our institution.  These are also the collections that are the most heavily used by researchers.

We have digitized a number of collections in their entirety: the President’s Office Files, the White House Central Chronological Files, the John F. Kennedy Personal Papers, and the White House Audio Collection. We have also digitized portions of the White House Central Subject Files, White House Photographs, White House Films, the Television Network National Broadcasting Collection, films from United States Government Agencies, and Gifts from Heads of State, a collection of museum artifacts . As of January 2011 the Digital Archives contain over 200,000 pages of textual documents, 1,500 photographs, 1,240 audio files, 80 moving image files, and almost 300 museum artifacts.

One section that will immediately appeal is that of White House photographs: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHP.aspx

“My parents believed that history is one of our greatest teachers,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the Kennedy Library Foundation. “As young people increasingly rely on the internet as their primary source for information, it is our hope that the Library’s online archive will allow a new generation to learn about this important chapter in American history. And as they discover the heroes of the civil rights movement, the pioneers of outer space, and the first Peace Corps volunteers, we hope they too are inspired to ask what they can do for their country.”