The foundation is supporting documentary films, photo projects and, most ambitiously, cataloging, digitizing and making searchable online Mr. Strachwitz's collection of some 17, 000 Mexican-American and Mexican 78rpm records, at the University of California's Strachwitz Frontera Collection.

WSJ: Five Decades of Arhoolie Records | By Barry Mazor

Even though the paper had a massive collection of photos that are priceless artifacts of Baltimore history, Smith found that digitizing the visual media in the archive was actually not included in the project.

FORBES: The Problem: A Startup's Most Important Asset