Momentous moment: Rediscovering Korean history through digitizing private letters

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the development of a digital archive for the Min Family Correspondence Collection of the University of Toronto Libraries, the first Korean historical manuscript collection in Canada. This strategic digitization project between the University of Toronto Libraries and the National Library of Korea accomplished the following: content analysis and annotation of manuscripts, metadata creation, and enhanced access to the resources. The results from this paper show that one of the crucial factors in successful digitization projects is building bridges between the two organizations as a partnership. Our main aim in this paper was to build a deeper understanding of how to develop a digital archive for Asian historical manuscripts and to explore how to improve the accessibility of rare historical records.