One of the kinks in the harried digital evolution for university special collections and archives has been the focus on getting their best stuff processed first. This selective approach to digitization, which of course has its roots in the pervasive financial and human resource constraints faced by most repositories, can have a profound long-term effect on what information finds the public realm.
Project REVEAL, which stands for Read and View English & American Literature, by The Harry Ransom Center hopes to change that. For Project REVEAL the entire manuscript collections of 25 of some of the best-known writers from nineteenth and early twentieth century American and English literature have been digitized. No cherry-picking here, every item in every author collection digitized with over 22,000 high-resolution images now available.
Why is this big? First, The Harry Ransom Center at the University Texas has perhaps the greatest collection of modern English and American literature in the world and second, they are removing the requirement for permission and use fees for a significant portion of its online collections.
A comprehensive approach to digitization coupled with open access = pure happiness for us here at Book Patrol.
Here is a selection of portraits of the writers included in this seminal project:
William Makepeace Thackeray
Henry David Thoreau
Christina Rosetti
Oscar Wilde
Katherine Mansfield
Joseph Conrad
Hart Crane
The full list of the REVEAL 25:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hart Crane, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, Joel Chandler Harris, Joseph Conrad, Julia Ward Howe, Katherine Mansfield, L. Frank Baum, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sara Teasdale, Thomas Hardy, Vachel Lindsay, Violet Hunt, Washington Irving, William Makepeace Thackeray, Zane Grey
Read the full press release
Top image: Thomas Hardy