Dickinson Museum Historic Photo Project - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Historic prints can now be seen at the click of a mouse in Dickinson.

The Dickinson Museum Center has started a multi-year project cataloging and digitizing photo collections.

Some of the pictures date back to the early 1800s.

Museum Center Director Dan Ingram says the center has scanned more than 3-thousand photos, but there is still more than 100-thousand to be scanned.

(Dan Ingram / Museum Center Director) "The greatest risk to any museum object is people handling it. so we have the opportunity here to handle these images once. Make high resolution images for the digital world and then put them away in safe keeping for perpetuity." 

Ingram says it's an expensive project in both equipment costs and time because the photos aren't the only item being scanned.

(Dan Ingram / Museum Center Director) "We are also scanning the envelopes they are in, which are highly acidic. We need to rehouse the collections. But, in order to preserve the information that is on the outside of the envelope we are scanning those as well." 

The museum is selling canvas prints of the photos to help offset the project costs.

If you would like to help with the scanning or donate you can contact the museum at 456-6225 or visit Dickinson museum center dot com.