Thousands of documents, photos and even recorded phone conversations of President John F. Kennedy are going online and available to a whole new generation of high-tech armchair historians.
The online digital archive of the 35th US president was unveiled yesterday by the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston.
Now, instead of having to travel to Boston, historians and the general public alike will have online access to 200,000 document pages, 1,200 individual telephone conversations, speeches and meetings and 1,500 photos.
"For young people today, if it isn't on the Internet, it doesn't really exist," said library director Tom Putnam. "I hope this brings him alive to a new generation of Americans. [It offers] a fuller sense of the man." It took four years to digitize the artifacts, photos and videos, and the process is ongoing, said Mr Putnam.
He called the collection "the largest and most sophisticated digital presidential archive in the nation". A team of nearly two dozen people scanned Kennedy's professional and personal records and tagged all key data, he added.
The digital archives ensure that important documents are backed up electronically in high resolution, should anything happen to the physical records, Mr Putnam said.
The Kennedy library website typically garners three million hits a year, a number Mr Putnam said he expects to increase substantially after the launch of the digital archives.
A previous special exhibit about the historic moon landing and Kennedy's efforts to advance the space programme saw eight million hits in a matter of days, he said.
Reuters