Updating The New York Public Library's Digital Imaging Unit

FAIN: CHA-286632-23

New York Public Library (New York, NY 10016-0109)
Brent Reidy (Project Director: September 2021 to July 2022)
Rebecca Wack (Project Director: July 2022 to present)

Replacement of cameras and book scanners to increase the capacity and quality of digitized humanities materials to researchers and patrons at the New York Public Library.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) respectfully requests a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is committed to raising $1.5 million in funding to support critical equipment upgrades to NYPL’s Digital Imaging Unit (DIU), and staff to meet the much higher capacity these equipment upgrades will allow. The DIU creates the majority of images published on the Library’s online Digital Collections platform, which, accessible free of charge, receives 77 million page views each year. The DIU also provides direct digitization services to scholars. Equipment upgrades will increase the DIU’s output by an estimated 20 percent and increase the resolution of digital images created by the Unit by up to 275 percent.