EMC to Sponsor Digitization Project

EMC Corporation will sponsor a digitization project to make globally accessible the collections of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, featuring nearly 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts, millions of documents and images, and thousands of hours of audio and video.

Additionally, EMC will provide support for the Museum’s videoconferencing education series, which connects tens of thousands of students nationwide to Cooperstown annually through live, point-to-point classroom lessons, with baseball as the lens on a variety of topics, including mathematics, science and history.

"Through the support of EMC, the Hall of Fame will be well-positioned to deliver content around the globe, with these critically important initiatives to digitize and make available our assets to everyone, not just those who are able to travel to Cooperstown," said Jeff Idelson, President, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. "EMC is committed to helping the Hall of Fame advance education worldwide, and we could not be more pleased to connect with their support, knowledge and expertise to make available the world’s greatest baseball collection."

The digitization initiative will protect, preserve and make accessible many of the museum’s nearly 500,000 photographs, more than 12,000 hours of recorded audio and video, three million documents and nearly 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts for future generations. This project is slated to launch later in 2010 and will make many of these items accessible to audiences over the next three years.

EMC will also provide additional support for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s nationally-recognized, baseball-themed Education Field Trip curriculum that it delivers to schools nationwide through live, point-to-point, videoconference programs. Through interactive, one-hour units, trained teachers and guest educators introduce students to a wide range of topics from the Museum’s 16 areas of learning emphasis. Curriculum units currently include mathematics, science, American history, leadership, labor history, fine arts, character education, special abilities, cultural diversity, communications arts, economics, civil rights, pop culture, geography, industrial technology and women’s history.

"Schools continue to grapple with challenges in funding and testing," said Idelson. "Our baseball-themed curriculum and videoconferencing has offered schools and students a complementary educational experience that can help address these challenges, and the program continues to gain in popularity each school year. With EMC’s help, we’re hoping to further drive home this curriculum for students."

"Strengthening education is the top priority of EMC’s social investment strategy. We encourage and support innovative educational experiences like the Hall of Fame’s Field Trip Series," said Bill Teuber, EMC’s Vice Chairman. "In fact, we applaud the Hall of Fame’s creativity and initiative and look forward to helping them extend the reach of this curriculum to schools throughout the U.S. and Canada."

Founded in 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is the world’s oldest and most well-known sports museum. A not-for-profit, educational institution, the Museum houses the world’s largest collection of baseball artifacts and ephemera, spanning historic moments on and off the field, as well as the game’s inseparable connection to the American experience and culture.  

EMC is committed to improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and closing the achievement gaps that persist among children in the United States and abroad. To accomplish this, EMC sponsors fun and challenging math, science, and engineering competitions; supports museums that bring the wonders of science exploration to the public; and partners with a variety of schools and non-profit organizations to engage youth in STEM education and careers.

Through the EMC Information Heritage Initiative, the company has donated more than $20 million to date to help advance the preservation and accessibility of information heritage via the Internet for research and education purposes. For the Hall of Fame, EMC Consulting will develop a long-term strategic plan for digitizing and storing the collection on EMC Celerra unified storage system and using EMC Avamar solutions for backup and recovery. This will provide the simplicity and efficiency needed for the Hall of Fame to reach its archival objectives while controlling network utilization, minimizing secondary storage growth, and reducing backup time.