The Mariners' Museum and Park

The Mariners’ Museum will catalogue and digitize its 10,000-item archive relating to the USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862, and make the documents accessible online in order to create a digital library, the timing of which will coincide with the sesquicentennial anniversary of the battle. Activities will include procuring and setting up digitizing equipment; updating the museum’s collections software; migrating existing records, cataloguing and entering metadata into the collections management system, digitizing the materials, and uploading the digital photographs and metadata into the collections management system. Thumbnail images and collection metadata will be available through WorldCat.org and on the museum’s website. This is the first phase of a large digitization effort seeking to increase access to the museum’s collections and accommodate a large and more global audience of maritime scholars and enthusiasts, Civil War scholars, academics, and students.