Abstract
The Archives of American Art, an archival unit of the Smithsonian Institution, with generous support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, has developed a digitization methodology to provide Web access to the papers of artists, dealers, critics, historians and art world figures that have been scanned in their entirety. The Archives’ unique role as an aggregator and distributor of primary resources through microfilm beginning in 1954, and adoption of the tools designed by and for archivists, including the USMARC AMC format in the 1980s, and particularly Encoded Archival Description (EAD) in the late 1990s, provided the operational infrastructure, capacity, and conducive environment that led to its ability to fully digitize and provide access to entire collections. The scalable infrastructure and workflow put in place where digitization and Web presentation seamlessly follow the fundamental archival work of arrangement and description demonstrate that a digitization methodology for archival collections need not be dictated by mismatched technology and approaches at the item or object level practiced by libraries and museums.
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