Grant: Building the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications

Date: December 2021
Amount: $889,405

With this grant, the Internet Archive will build the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC): an online, open-access resource that preserves the vital resources — past, present, and future — that document the history of amateur radio and communications. The DLARC will provide a key open-access educational resource, free to use for researchers, students, and the general public. It will also serve as a permanent archive for the preservation of the history of ARDC, its members, and key individuals and organizations involved in the broader amateur radio movement. The DLARC will be both an education program building a unique and unparalleled collection of primary and secondary resources, but also an innovative technical project that will build a digital library that combines both digitized print materials and born-digital content and whose curatorial focus is driven by archiving and providing unified access to both personal and organizational archival records. Building the DLARC thus includes three distinct areas of work:

  • a large-scale scanning program that digitizes relevant print materials such as journals, monographs, books, physical ephemera, and other physical records from both institutions and individuals;
  • a large-scale digital archiving initiative that seeks to curate, archive, and provide specialized access to “born-digital” materials, such as digital photos and audio-video, as well as websites and web-published material;
  • a personal archiving campaign to ensure the preservation and future access of notable individuals and stakeholders involved in the founding and activities of ARDC and the broader community.

Learn more at: https://archive.org.