The flight plan of a digital initiatives project: Providing remote access to aerial photographs of Colorado

To present a case study of a digital initiative for cartographic materials in order to provide a reference for other institutions embarking on similar projects.

Describes the technical and practical details of the processes involved in georeferencing and providing online access to scanned aerial photographs.

In the short time that the site has been live, the Map Library has already seen a marked increase in reference queries from both local and national users.

From a practical standpoint, the project would not have been a success without collaboration between map, metadata, and systems librarians.

To date, little has been published about digital initiatives projects providing online access to historical aerial photographs, a distinct and complex subset of cartographic materials. It is hoped that this case study will allow other institutions to learn from the approach and experience of the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.