Lincoln Editor

              October - December 2001 Volume 1 Number 2
PROJECT RECEIVES $46,000 GRANT
TO FILM AND DIGITIZE LINCOLN DOCUMENTS
O n November 28, Senior United States District Judge Edward L. Filip-pine
of St. Louis donated the Lincoln pardon and related document
detailed in our last Lincoln Editor to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library and Museum. The documents will become a part of the Henry
Horner Lincoln Collection.
Filippine received the documents from a colleague on the court, the
late Judge Roy Harper. He presented the document to Illinois First Lady
Lura Lynn Ryan, pictured at right with the judge. Ryan accepted the
document on behalf of the State of Illinois. Both the judge and the First
Lady spoke briefly about the importance of bringing the document to
Springfield, the site of the presidential library and museum, which is now
under construction.
The LSTA award makes possible an
important first step in the process of collecting
document images for the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
and also makes Lincoln documents in these four
libraries more accessible to scholars and the public.
This grant application was based on the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln’s plan to capture color images of
historical documents on microfilm and then to have a
vendor create high-quality color digital images
directly from the microfilm. Using microfilm to
capture the images ensures that preservation is a
central component of the process from the beginning.
In the future, staff members of the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln will prepare authoritative
transcriptions of each of the documents. Thus, this
generous grant makes possible the collection of the
first several thousand images of what will likely be
hundreds of thousands of images over the life of the
entire project.
T he Illinois State Library has awarded the
Illinois State Historical Library (ISHL), in
partnership with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln and
three other Illinois libraries, a Library Services and
Technology Act (LSTA) Dream Grant of $46,000.
Project Director Daniel W. Stowell worked closely
with ISHL Director Kathryn M. Harris and Curator
Kim Bauer to develop the grant application, one of
only fifty-six that were successful among more than
two hundred submitted. The grant will permit the
purchase of a color microfilm camera and fund the
microfilming and digitization of approximately 2,500
Lincoln documents from the collections of the
Illinois State Historical Library, and the libraries of
Illinois College in Jacksonville, Lincoln College in
Lincoln, and Bradley University in Peoria. The grant
also includes funding for the cataloging of each item
to provide library patrons with access to digital
images of the documents.
FEDERAL JUDGE FILIPPINE DONATES
LINCOLN DOCUMENT TO PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
Photo courtesy of the Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency.