The Library is currently using a $245,000 grant from the McGregor Fund to digitize part of the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. According to a story in UVA Today, the Library hopes to add 25,000 more pages to the 50,000 pages it has digitized over the last two years from books beginning in 1475, books that curator David Whitesell says are the “the oldest and most valuable volumes that are not already available in electronic form.” The Library “hopes to make it to 1700,” using high resolution cameras to digitize everything, says project manager Lois Widmer, including blank pages and delicate fold-out maps in an effort to make online viewing “the same experience you would have if you were turning the pages.” Focusing on the “European discovery and settlement of the Americas,” the volumes includes Hernán Cortés’s account of the Conquistadors’ destruction of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, as well as Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas’s plea for better treatment of Native Americans. The project is a community effort involving Special Collection staff, the Library Digital Production Team, and student workers. “We couldn’t do what we do without the students,” says Digital Production Group manager Christina Deane.

McGregor Library Offers Rare Digital History of the Americas (UVA Today)