Auto History Preservation Society The Project Explained

The Automotive History Preservation Project
"The Project" is a galvanizing effort to digitally capture our automotive history for present and future generations. By "digitally capture" we mean to scan, clean and load any and all documents, drawings, images, and artwork created by and for the automotive industry. This includes all documents and 2-dimentional materials that were created to design, build, and service the automobile and those created to inform and sell these vehicles and components to the public.

The Project's core mission is to digitally capture, restore, and preserve these materials for present and future generations. The Project is a key element in the mission of the Automotive History Preservation Society. You may learn more about the Society by clicking HERE.

Why We Are Engaged in This
Scholars, historians, researchers, museums, and even enthusiasts are finding it more and more difficult to acquire key materials essential to the story of the automobile. Much material is being lost to the public either by physical loss or the movement into private hands.

How We Are Accomplishing It
The Project uses distributed processing and virtual workspaces to acquire, digitize, and make available these materials. This allows a multitude of people to locate and digitize the materials. Once digitized, they can be moved throughout the globe electronically to the appropriate processing individual who can then clean and later load the material onto our secure web server. As such, people with different skill levels and skill sets can work on the materials. This lets volunteers and students assist in the acquisition and storage.

The Project has already captured, processed, and made available over 250,000 page images using students, volunteers, and part-time professionals.

The Project's Goals Are Clear

To discover original paper and even high resolution digital copies wherever located.
To digitize (scan) paper copies and restore the images to as close to original as possible in size and coloration.
To store these digital copies in the Society's Eric B. White Digital Documents Library.

Over 250,000 digital documents have been cleaned and restored. They are loaded, stored and available to the public in the web-based Library - globally - 24/7/365. The Library can be reached by clicking HERE.

The Results Are Already Coming In
By enabling the Project, we have created cache of materials that will be of interest to enthusiasts, usable for publications, essential for research and education, and can assist museums in describing their collections. Significantly, the Library's document collections will educate and illuminate the public as to the history of the automobile.

Our Longer Term Goal
The Project estimates that its long term success will be to capture at least 5 million page images of material in the next 3-5 years. Want to know more? Click HERE for a more detailed presentation on the Project and Its goals.

How You Can Help
We can use as many hands as possible to meet our goals. You can donate, sponsor pages, join as a full member, volunteer to help with the various steps, or donate materials in either paper or digital format. Click HERE to get involved!

Click on a collection category below to see what we are up to.

* About the Automotive History Preservation Project (2)

Auto History Project - Auto Brochures (1)

Auto History Project - Factory Documents (1)

Auto History Project - Magazine Archive (1)

Auto History Project - Photo Archive (1)

Auto History Project - Press Release Materials (1)

Auto History Project - Print Advertising (1)

Auto History Project - Styling & Design Studies (1)