The recent discussions about newspapers has got me thinking about the history, and costs, of information. Recently we just digitized a rather large collection of microfilm and are getting it ready to publish it on the library’s website. The below image is a letter to the “Department of Dakota” circa 1869 detailing Native American populations regarded as either “peacable” or “hostile”. Notice the first page of the letter says “copy” at the top. It was someone’s job to simply write out in longhand copies of these letters as they were sent to various officers. I knew this intellectually, but until seeing 28,000+ pages of these types of letters it really hit me how far we’ve come since then. At least from the standpoint of technology. [Full Text of Letter]
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