Not the most exciting video but, ‘The Gado 2 is an inexpensive, open source archival scanning robot which small archives can use to digitise their photographic collections.’
Project Gado, a technology startup building sustainable models for archival digitisation has announced a ‘strategic partnership’ with Getty Images. Project Gado, a robotics startup that focuses on digitising archival collections, to bring archival African American historical collections to life. Many of these images have previously never been shared with the wider public, and thanks to the technology can now be seen by a larger audience.
The partnership allows Getty Images to license historic photographs digitised by Project Gado’s.
“The historic photos digitised by Gado lend valuable perspective and context to our world today, and we are delighted to make them available for license so a wide audience can access them,” said Matthew Butson, VP, Archive at Getty Images, “As innovators in the digital media space, we find Project Gado’s efforts to enable archives — regardless of size — to preserve their visual history nothing short of amazing, and we are excited to partner with them.”
The first archive to participate in the Project Gado-Getty Images partnership is the Afro American Newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland, where Gado scanning technology has been used to digitize over 120,000 images from the paper’s 1.5 million photo collection. The newspaper, which dates back to 1892, is the oldest African American newspaper in the country, and their photo archive contains everything from Civil Rights and World War II historic photographs to rarely seen photographs of Jackie Robinson, Louis Armstrong, and Joe Louis. Through the new partnership, many of the Afro American Newspapers’ historic photographs are now available for licensing on Getty Images’ archival photos page.
Since 2010, Project Gado has developed an open source archival scanning robot that small archives, museums, and libraries can use to digitize their photo collections with little to no upfront cost. The Gado 2 can autonomously scan and save a photograph every 42 seconds, allowing archivists to focus on more important tasks than manual digitization. In addition to the company’s technological innovation, Project Gado aims to make scanning sustainable for the small archive through image licensing.