Many people now preserve old family photos by scanning them and storing them online. The logistics of doing so are more complicated, however, when your keepsakes number in the tens of thousands.
Later this year, the Cantor Arts Center expects to complete a digitization project that will accomplish just that. Since 2010, its archivists have been painstakingly photographing the items in its collection. In February, they passed a milestone: the capture of 30,000 pieces of art, nearly three-quarters of the total collection and more than 90 percent of the pieces slated for digitization. The high-resolution digital images are saved in an online database that, like the museum itself, is open to the public free of charge.
Two years ago, Google included 105 of the Cantor's images in its Google Art Project—a digital art project with similar preservation and access goals, but occurring on a global scale.
The Cantor continues to photograph its collection on an almost daily basis. With about 3,000 pieces left to digitize, archivists hope to complete the project by the end of October.
