JFK Library archives will go digital

Globe Staff

Endeca Technologies Inc., a Cambridge-based search applications company, said that it has been selected by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation to "provide the software and technical assistance that will provide website users with a robust search engine experience when accessing the nation’s first online digitized presidential archives."

The digital archives will launch on January 20, 2011, the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration as the 35th President of the United States, Endeca said in a press release.

"The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the first among American presidential libraries not 'born digital' to undertake the creation of a digital library," the release added. "Of the 13 presidential libraries in existence today, only President Bill Clinton’s and President George W. Bush’s contain born-digital materials."

The release included a statement from Tom Putnam, director of the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, who said, “Our library’s research facilities are among the busiest of its kind, so it was essential for us to find new ways to make our archives – and all their varied multi-media – accessible to everyone from the most seasoned historian, to school children experiencing this information for the first time.”

(The photo of Kennedy that appears with this post is from the JFK Library collection. It was taken by photographer Cecil Stoughton.)