More than a century of missionary work is going digital through a $100,000 grant from the Getty Foundation.
The grant will enable USC Libraries and the USC College Center of Religion and Civic Culture to add 29,000 images to an online database of photographs by missionaries in Africa and Asia. The photographs, taken over the past 150 years, will be part of the Basel Mission Archive and accessible to students and academics across the globe.
The images will become part of USC Libraries' existing Internet Mission Photography Archive (IMPA) - a visual archive collaborated between USC Libraries and CRCC.
Jon Miller, professor of sociology and director of research at the CRCC, pointed to the significance of the archive as "a unique collection of collections."
"[The photographs'] value as a broad scholarly resource lies precisely in their ability to capture cultural encounters on a very wide scale and to provide a visual appreciation for the economic, political, cultural and technological transformation of traditional societies," he said.
Miller also noted the demonstration of the early-stages of globalization in these images.
Miller said he is hoping to increase the archive volume to represent a wider range of time period and historical events. Fundraising is underway to catalog more pictures for worldwide viewers.
In addition to hosting the archive, the grant also supports improvement of the network system and maintenance of the high-resolution images.
Basel-Mission photographs are scanned and digitalized in cities where they are currently kept, such as Basel and London. Electronic copies will be transmitted to the database within the next 18 months.
The data will be accessible through USC Digital Libraries Archive and archive website. It is opened to the public, but restrictions apply to limit commercial use of content.
The archive currently includes 14,000 missionary images from six Catholic missionary societies from Germany to Africa, said Wayne Shoaf, director of information delivery, organization and retrieval.
The site, also funded by a 2002 grant from the Getty, launched in late 2004.
Todd Grappone, associate executive director of information development and management at the USC Libraries, wrote in an e-mail that the expansion of the archive and other library resources allow USC to be a leader in collective research.
"We hope to make this a model for other researchers on campus using the digital library services to develop leadership roles in archiving important materials," he wrote.
Timothy Sato, communications director for CRCC, said the goal is to "incorporate students and faculty members on topics of social justice, religion, culture and visual art" through institution resources.
Several projects by Miller, including a published article and conference papers, have involved Basel Mission images. Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Women in World History has also utilized the Internet archive at USC.
