Authors: Scott Skinner
Date Submitted: November 30, 2008
Article Type: Discourse

How long does it take to curate a collection and put it up online? The Drachen Foundation can now speak from experience, and the answer is not pretty – almost 10 years!

In a small organization it takes a fair amount of prioritization to make sure things get done. So it was with the Cody Collection, purchased for the Foundation at the Sotheby’s auction in 1996 (see the Drachen Foundation Kite Journal #25 [2]). Taking care of the glass-plate negatives, photographs, papers, and actual kites has been an ongoing priority from which we have learned many of our archival practices.

But making the collection truly useful has been another problem completely. The Foundation has traveled several of the kites for study, it has shipped copies of the paper archive, and it has offered Cody kite plans for sale. All these efforts have been appreciated, but have been aimed at a few recipients. Putting the archive online would drastically increase the number of people worldwide with access to this information.

Page Number: 22
PDF Link: Discourse Issue