The Thomas E. Watson Papers Digital Collection

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This page includes general information about the Thomas E. Watson Papers Digital Collection. For more detailed information regarding the building of this digital collection and other topics related to large-scale digitization of Southern Historical Collection materials, please visit the From Investigation to Implementation: Building a Program for the Large-Scale Digitization of Manuscripts web site.

About the Project

The Thomas E. Watson Papers Digital Collection is the result of a two-year project to digitize and make available Thomas E. Watson's entire manuscript collection, which is housed at the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. A joint effort between the Southern Historical Collection and the Carolina Digital Library and Archives, this project was made possible by a grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation. Work on digitization of the Thomas E. Watson Papers began in 2007 and was completed in 2009.

Project Scope

This digital collection includes a searchable, browsable index of letters from the Correspondence Series and images from the Pictures Series of the Thomas E. Watson Papers, and provides access to digital facsimiles of the entire collection using its EAD-encoded finding aid. Additionally, three complete runs of periodicals owned by the Watson-Brown Foundation - Watson's Magazine, The Jeffersonian, and The Watsonian - were added to the digital collection in early 2009. Through this digital collection, researchers can browse facsimiles of the manuscript collection using the finding aid in much the same way they would when visiting their physical counterparts in the Southern Historical Collection.

Please note: Originals of materials labeled as Digital Folder and Digital Item in the finding aid are not held by the Southern Historical Collection and are available to view in digital format only. Original materials are owned and held by the Watson-Brown Foundation of Thomson, Georgia.

Digitization

Imaging of the materials was conducted from January 2008 to March 2009, using a Zeutschel Omni Scan 12000 Bookcopy. Some materials from Series 3. Publications, including Watson's Magazine, The Watsonian, and selected pamphlets, were digitized using the Internet Archive Scribe System. Materials were scanned in color at 400 dpi in the Digital Production Center of the Carolina Digital Library and Archives.

Metadata and Standards

The Thomas E. Watson Papers Digital Collection adheres to current digital library standards. The finding aid for the collection is encoded in Encoded Archival Description (EAD) XML format, and descriptive metadata for item-level records is encoded in the Metadata for Object Description Schema (MODS) and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). Technical metadata for master TIFF files is encoded in the Metadata for Images in XML (MIX) schema. All metadata for the project is encoded in Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) "wrappers".

Contacts

Reference Questions:
Southern Historical Collection, Research and Instructional Services
CB#3926 Wilson Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27515-8890
(919) 962-1345
mss@email.unc.edu