Join the Masonic Digital Archive Project

The driving force behind the Masonic Digital Archive is to make the facts and figures, reports and activities found in the Proceedings of the U.S. Grand Lodges available in a searchable database. Members, researchers and educators will be able to search every page and word in Proceedings dating back to 1733.

The George Washington Masonic Memorial (GWMM) has partnered with OCLC (a nonprofit membership organization) to digitize Proceedings and make them available online. Other media types, such as photographs, maps and ephemera, may be included as well to turn your unique historical collections into fully searchable online resources available from any Web browser.

To date, the Grand Lodge of Washington, the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma, and the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts have digitized their Proceedings. Browse these collections HERE .

If you would like to join the Archive project, please contact George Seghers, Executive Director at George Washington Masonic Memorial.


Components of the Archives Project

OCLC Digitization Services can digitize Grand Lodge Proceedings based on a series of technical specifications and processes that the Memorial and OCLC have outlined. OCLC will create high-quality, digital files from your original print volumes. The scanned files will be delivered to agreed upon specifications for resolution, processing, organization, file naming and file format.

Finally, OCLC will build a CONTENTdm database that includes user-friendly access files (JPEG2000, PDF's) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for full-text searching.

OCLC's CONTENTdm® Digital Collection Management Software provides a complete solution for Grand Lodges to store, manage and deliver their digital collections to the Internet.

Once items are digitized and loaded into CONTENTdm collections as described above, every Grand Lodge Proceeding - along with other media types from photographs and maps to audio and video files - can appear on the Internet. Some highlights of CONTENTdm are:

Powerful end-user search/browse interface.
CONTENTdm's text-based search engine is designed to retrieve results from millions of items no matter the format - books, newspapers, maps, audio/video and more.

Flexible for collection building.
CONTENTdm gives Grand Lodges full control over digital resources, their descriptions, access and display. It stores any type of file and displays all items viewable in a Web browser.

Active user community.
Through CONTENTdm, Freemasonry will become part of an active user community that is advancing efforts to digitize primary resources by sharing best practices and putting millions of items on the Web. Libraries' and other cultural organizations' successful digital projects have received community recognition, provided leadership, support genealogy research, and access to historical information.

Learn more

Please attend an upcoming Web session which will be conducted by OCLC staff. Please contact Mark Tabbert at the GWMM to schedule a presentation on the Masonic Digital Archive project - Mark Tabbert.

View current digital collections CONTENTdm at: www.oclc.org/contentdm/.

Receive a price estimate for digitizing your Proceedings by contacting George Seghers, Executive Director at the George Washington Masonic Memorial. He will send a letter that outlines the pricing for your collection of Proceedings.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization. More than 69,000 libraries and other cultural heritage organizations around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials.