Historic Ithaca & The History Center Collaborate on Digitization Project

South Central Regional Library Council awarded a $7,651  Technology & Digitization Grant to Historic Ithaca in collaboration with The History Center in Tompkins County to digitize the 1954 Ithaca Tax Photograph Index Cards collection held by Historic Ithaca. This collection includes approximately 5,600 images, depicting all taxable buildings in the City of Ithaca including residences, businesses, and industries. The resulting images will be available online through Historic Ithaca’s collection on New York Heritage Digital Collections and on The History Center’s innovative open-source digital history platform HistoryForge (tompkins.historyforge.net).

A small, initial set of 112 of these images were previously uploaded to Historic Ithaca’s collection on New York Heritage Digital Collections (New York Heritage) as a trial. This project will benefit the region by completing the collection which provides a unique view of the built environment of a small Upstate New York city in the mid-20th century and by increasing its accessibility.