For the last few months, Ms. Doane and a few colleagues, along with volunteers from the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, have been setting the stage for a mammoth attempt to bring the entire collection into the digital age. The result, if money can be found, will be more than just an archive. Digitized with a custom-crafted scanner already in operation, the searchable online atlas will ultimately show any spot in the heavens as it appeared from the late 19th century to the mid-1980s — an astronomical Wayback Machine.

La numérisation de cet ensemble permettra, enfin, de faire ce que personne n’a jamais fait, à savoir étudier systématiquement ces plaques. Elle permettra, aussi, d’avoir la certitude que cette mémoire inexploitée ne sera pas détruite par une quelconque catastrophe avant d’avoir servi au progrès de la connaissance.

Source : New York Times.