http://www.domitor.org/about/mhdl.html

As you may have seen from the illustration in our previous post, the early cinema studies organisation Domitor has announced a fund-raising drive to support the work of the Media History Digital Library, the non-profit initiative digitising out of copyright film periodicals and making them freely available online which has been much mentioned here already.

Domitor’s Early Cinema Periodicals Digitization Project aims to raise $5,000 dollars, from its members or from anyone interested, sufficient to digitise 50,000 pages (that’s an amazing 10 pages for a dollar). They hope to reach this target by 1 January 2012, and have suggested the following scale of donations: Institutions and full or associate professors or the equivalent: $200-250; assistant professors or the equivalent: $100; students or non-waged scholars: $50. They don’t give a suggested figure for waged (or non-waged) ordinary souls who might be keen to help, so you’ll just have to think of whatever sems appropriate, I guess. The first 20 donations of $200 or more will receive a free copy of the Domitor 2006 proceedings, Early Cinema and the National.

We’re so blessed with a vast wealth of free online resources that we can forget that nothing really comes for free. The money has to be found from somewhere, and not only will you be the beneficiary, but even better, you will be giving money to support the endeavours of those who share in your passion for the subject. There’s a donate option c/o PayPal on the Domitor site, and if you do you’ll get your name to appear on a roll of honour.

It’s good also to see Domitor so enthusiastically embrace the opportunities for research in the online world. As we have said already, the Media History Digital Library is a game-changer for research in our area – it is the new research library, free from institutional oversight or single physical location, open to all, free to all. And with just a little extra funding, there will be that much more that is free to all.

For a listing of the MHDL’s early cinema periodicals already available, see here.