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Your donations will sustain and preserve the 44th Bomb Group's history - making it accessible for generations to come.

What will your funding support? 

Learn more below.

The following fixed costs are associated with building and maintaining the Digital Archive:

  • Website hosting costs - $150 per year
  • Expanding the archive and restoring existing photos:
    • Equipment needs to scan and restore items (i.e. scanners for 75-year-old negatives, microfilm, and Super 8 film) - ~$1000
    • Software to professionally edit photos (Photoshop/Lightroom) - $200 per year
    • Software for website design (Canva, PPT, etc.) - $150 per year

Beyond material needs, here's a little more information on what it took to bring the archive to life from a time perspective:

In case we haven't met - I'm Mara Storey - the granddaughter of a 44th BG veteran.

This project began in the fall of 2020 and has taken about a year-and-a-half to bring to life - requiring about 800 hours of work: 

  • ~100 hours digitizing Lundy's Archive + consolidating my personal collection
  • ~200 hours cataloging the archive digitally
  • ~80 hours on research and development to identify a web-based software meeting requirements + subsequently designing the website
  • ~150 hours writing scripts & manually (in some cases) uploading four-thousand items to the digital archive
  • ~300 hours cleaning metadata, creating archival structure (e.g. collections, tags, exhibits) to capture four-thousand items 

For me, this is a passion project - one I work on during nights and weekends - because it's a resource I wish I'd had when I was searching for my grandfather Wally's story of war at Shipdham. 

My hope is that this digital archive makes it possible to see the 44th's war through an airman's eyes and find photographic evidence of your loved one's story. 

In my day job, I work in People Analytics. I believe that utilizing using business analytics and data science tools for historic preservation is both an innovative and pragmatic way to unlock new stories from a 75-year-old war.

I will continue to dedicate (and donate) my time to these efforts. Your donations are appreciated.