The Preservation Imaging Department serves the Indiana Historical Society in a number of technical areas concerning the creation of surrogate images of historic documents, whether it be reformatting newspapers onto microfilm, digitizing photographs from the Library's collections, or providing photographic reproductions for exhibition purposes.

Indiana Newspaper Program
In 1980 the IHS created an outreach service called the Indiana Newspaper Project to help preserve the states oldest newspapers. During the years 1988-1991 and 1993-1996, IHS was a participant in the United States Newspaper Program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Over ten million pages of Indiana newspapers have been reformatted to microfilm by the department; and all of these films are available for purchase by the public for research purposes. For more information, see the on-line catalog which shows all of the available titles and inclusive dates. The catalog is updated annually.

To download an order form and pricing information for a newspaper on microfilm, click here. (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Historic Document Preservation Program
The Historic Document Preservation Program is an extension of the Indiana Historical Society’s mission to preserve the history of Indiana and its stories by assisting small museums, libraries and historical societies in reformatting historical materials. Our Preservation Imaging Department has over 25 years of experience in the careful handling of historic collections with the Historic Indiana Newspaper Microfilm Project. In the last five years PID has digitized over 15,000 items from IHS collections and has converted moving image film in our collection to DVD. Services include:

• Microfilming: documents, large format blue prints
• Digital Scanning : documents, large format maps, photographs, nitrate film negatives, glass plate negatives, and panorama views
• Digital Conversion of Moving Image film: 16 mm or video tape

Our staff expertise, manpower, and state-of-the-art equipment may be utilized for a fee for non-profit, institutional reformatting projects. We will walk you through the process and requirements of your specific project and provide you with images that follow best standards of practice in the field.
We are happy to provide you with information that may be utilized in a grant or private funding format.

For more information contact the Indiana Historical Society, Preservation Imaging Dept., 450 W. Ohio St., Indianapolis, IN 46202, or e-mail us.