Who owns the copyright to our materials? You do. Partners retain any copyrights for their materials. Our use policy states that the digital materials are free for the public to use for educational or scholarly purposes. For commercial, publication, licensing, or reproduction rights, we send all inquiries directly to you. Please see the Portal to Texas History Project Agreement form at the end of the application.

Can we get a digital copy of our materials? Absolutely. Each awardee will receive a copy of their images on DVD. You can use these images to print photographs for exhibits, sell reprints, or load them onto your own website or digital library. The images will be in uncompressed .tif tile format.

Are there any limits on what we do with our digital images? No, there are no limitations whatsoever. They are your images. Our only stipulation per our Project Agreement form is that we will host your images in perpetuity on the Portal to Texas History.

How many people use the Portal to Texas History? A lot! Every month we are averaging 105,000 unique visitors and almost 4 million hits.

What formats will be considered for an award? Please send in proposals for digitizing slides, maps, architectural drawings, oversize sketches, artwork, glass plate negatives, and photographs.  Unfortunately, newspapers cannot be digitized with this grant. If you are interested in digitizing newspapers, please see our page about the Texas Digital Newspaper Program.

Is there a size limit to the original?  No. if it is larger than 12"x18" then it is considered a large format item and is priced accordingly. As long as it will fit in our lab, we can do it.

What standards do you use when scanning images? Here are our scanning standards.

If we send our historic materials (originals) will they be safe until returned?  Yes, when not scanning the materials, they are secured in our lab. The lab also has a keyed or password only entry outside of our normal office hours.

How do I get my materials to Denton for scanning? Previous partners have driven them here, or mailed or shipped them with insurance on them. You are responsible for delivering the materials to the lab. We will cover shipping them back to you with insurance on them if you specify how much insurance to put on them.

How long will the materials be at UNT for processing? (when can we get originals back)  We will schedule processing of all the materials during the course of the year.  This depends on how many items are being done, and whether we are just scanning them or also doing metadata.  In many cases it will take about 2-3 months, or possibly more if it is a very large collection.

Do people have to pay to access the Portal to Texas History?  Never. The Portal to Texas History is a free database, and we have visitors from all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries.

How much content does the Portal have online? We host over 350,000 digital images from our 95 collaborative partners.

Is this grant open to all libraries (i.e. school, public, & special) or only academics?  We work with libraries of all types, as well as museums, historical societies, archives, or other groups who hold Texas heritage materials.

How many grants do you anticipate awarding? For last year's program, we had 18 awards. This year we have more funding, so it's possible that there will be up to 25 awards. It really depends on who is selected and how big a project they want to do.

If we decide to create our own metadata, how long does the training take? The training takes an hour to an hour and a half. It is not too difficult to do once you have completed the first few ones. We also have an online tutorial that explains the process.

What is metadata? Metadata is the description of the photograph or item. Here's what it looks like for a photograph. If you would like to know all about our metadata, it is thoroughly documented.

The application only mentions "at-risk local history" does it matter what type? or will the reviewers be looking for something specific like more Texas history type of documents? It's only for photographs or large format items like maps, posters, or oversize photos. The items have to be related to Texas history, which we consider very broadly. As an example, one of our former awardees is the Palestine Public Library. We digitized photographs of early Palestine citizens, their town and local area. The photographs dated from civil-war era to about the 1940s. They are not pictures of famous people (for the most part), but just focus on that area: its homes, citizens, schools, etc.

Will this be an on-going grant or is this a one time thing? We hope to continue this program as long as funding is available.  The Summerlee Foundation of Dallas has been very generous with its support of this program in the past.

Return to Summerlee Application