GREENFIELD, Ind. -- Original photos, poems and papers from Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley will soon be available for download on the Internet.\nIU-Purdue University Indianapolis is scanning the documents into digital images and posting them online in conjunction with several museums and libraries, including the Hancock County Public Library in Riley's hometown of Greenfield, Ind.\n"Digitizing documents, especially things that are irreplaceable, is a big movement right now," said Diana Hoy, the library's assistant director. "We think it's real important to preserve (the Riley material), and this makes it accessible to anybody online, anywhere."\nThe Hancock County library received an $8,700 grant for the project and recruited help from IUPUI and the Riley Old Home Society, which preserves Riley artifacts and operates a museum in Greenfield.\nRiley, who died in 1916, was famous for his folksy verse and characters Old Aunt Mary, Little Orphan Annie and The Raggedy Man.\nIUPUI's University Library plans to scan 100 original letters to and from Riley, 200 photographs and 24 early editions of Riley's poems. Also being scanned are handwritten poems, posters advertising Riley's appearances and newspaper accounts.\n"It grew into this huge collaboration," said Jenny Johnson, digital initiatives project coordinator at IUPUI University Library.\nElizabeth J. Van Allen, a Riley biographer, said there was irony in Riley's rural poetry going high-tech because the poet believed the early 20th-century world was becoming too industrialized and yearned for simpler times in some of his works.
\nStill, Van Allen believes Riley would appreciate the prospect of reaching a wider audience.\n"Had Riley been around now, he would have found any way to popularize his work," she said. "He was very good at that"
