Hello!

 My name is Ali Khafaji and I have a Master's degree in Museum Studies and Historic Preservation and a Bachelor's degree in Audiovisual. I currently work as a museum digitization specialist at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art. 

The primary goal of this project is digitizing thousands of important, rare negatives that have not been published before on any platform. We will be publishing them online for the following reasons:

1- It will serve as an important source for scholars interested in studying the real history of the Middle East as among the negatives there is evidence for visits of presidents, kings, and ambassadors from all over the world to Iraq. We will supplement the shortage of resources highlighting relations between Iraq and the world after World War 2 until early 2000's.

2- The collectors of these rare negative images do not have the needed experience in digitization techniques, preservation, and web-development skills to publish their collections online.

3- The website we will design can be developed into a digital museum for the Middle East as this project continues to evolve. 

To achieve this mission we need your help with the following:

1- Providing digital equipment, flashes, cameras, computers, scanners, etc.
The type and price will be chosen accordingly based on the amount of contributions received, for example:
A range of cameras can be used with an expected range of quality: Phase One XF IQ4 digital camera system Vs. Sony A7RIV digital camera system.

2 - Website and Cloud storage space large enough for several thousand of high-resolution images.

3. Travel and accommodation costs to and from the countries where the collectors' reside (ensures safe and private handling by specifically-trained professionals experienced in Art etiquette). 

4 - Wages for digitization assistants and imaging post-processing photography software.

Outcomes and Challenges

The cost of project will be divided into two phases:

Phase I: Purchase all the equipment, hardware and the software needed for this project.

Phase II: initiate the digitization and processing for all the available negatives and publish them online.

Worst case scenario: The target budget is not reached...

We will be facing one of three potential solutions:

The first solution:

Purchase less equipment to complete the project over a longer timeline.

The second solution:-

 Purchase the needed equipment, operate on the targeted timeline; however we will reduce the total number of negatives that we will be processing and digitizing.

The third solution:-

 Carryout the project with whatever funds received and use it as a strong model to attract more contributors at other fundraising websites. 

My family members are more than willing to volunteer their time to support this project in the following capacities: finance manager, web developer, data analyst, meta data developer, and project manager.

To help us spread this message globally, please share this mission within your network! 

Thank you for your generous contributions and your time!