After much planning and a lot of tedious grant writing, the Lowcountry Digital Library is now open to the public. This electronic archive was created and is hosted by the Special Collections department at the College of Charleston, but it aims to be a multi-institution collaborative project. The website currently contains more than 7,000 high resolution images, and uses the state-of-the-art ContentDM software to provide users with robust metadata and great image-zooming tools. Within the next three years the Lowcountry Digital Libary aims to hold more that 50,000 images from a number of archives in the southeastern part of South Carolina. The content ranges from architectural drawings, photographs, and maps to manuscripts, ephemera, and artifacts, all emphasising local history and local collections.
Currently the Lowcountry Digital Library contains more than one thousand images from the Charleston Archive at the Charleston County Public Library. The first collection of photographs we uploaded was the “Photographic Record of the Cooper River Bridge,” a two-volume scrapbook of the construction of the first bridge over that river in 1928–1929. Our collection of nearly 1,500 architectural photographs of Charleston, taken by Charles N. Bayless between 1979 and 1988, is our second project. Charleston Archive staff member Celeste Wiley has already scanned and composed metadata for more than 1,000 of these images, and the rest will be uploaded over the next several weeks.
The launch of the Lowcountry Digital Library is a great boon to the Charleston Archive. In the coming months, we will be uploading many more images of rare and unique materials from our collection. We invite you to browse these materials and to send us your comments!
If you’d like to learn more about the creation of this digital archive, check out Diane Knich’s story in the Charleston Post and Courier this week, titled “Digital Library Launched.”
This year—2009—marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of a “new commercial era” in Charleston’s history. Or at least that’s how Mayor R. Goodwyn Rhett described it in his annual report for 1909. Among the major achievements of that year, Rhett spoke proudly of the commencement of “the Boulevard.” “For more than half a century,” he noted, “ it has been the dream of our people to extend the Battery westward. The dream, in fuller measure than ever pictured, is now becoming a reality.” Between 1909 and 1922, the city spent tens of thousands of taxpayer’s dollars on a massive project that included three main features: a seawall along more that 5,000 feet of Charleston’s Ashley River waterfront, 191 newly-filled residential lots, and a scenic waterfront avenue now known as Murray Boulevard. Residents of this city and tourists alike now take for granted the beautiful views afforded by Rhett’s “Boulevard Project,” but few remember the years of struggle required to bring it to fruition.
