By Sam Stavis Daily Staff Reporter Expert historians and amateur scholars alike now have access to a powerful new tool for learning about U.S. history - the University's Making of America online resource. The Making of America project is a digital library containing 1,600 books and 50,000 journal articles published between 1850 and 1877. Its purpose is to preserve aging historical documents and to provide people with historical information they could not otherwise find. I don't think there's anything that's close to this. MOA provides users with a unique view of United States history by displaying digitized images of actual documents from the 19th Century.
Users can find specific information by typing in keywords or searching subject-related pages.
These searches usually will produce the original texts, although some sources have been converted to electronic text for easier viewing. This process gives MOA users the opportunity to view documents as they were originally published - complete with illustrations and footnotes. It took Digital Library Production Services about one year to scan or reproduce the documents contained in the MOA archives. Price-Wilkin said this form of data storage ensures that the information will survive indefinitely. This stuff is good for the long term.