Traditional large digitization projects demand massive resources from the central unit (library, museum, or university) that has acquired funding for them. Another model, enabled by easy access to cameras, scanners, and web tools, calls for public contributions to community collections of artifacts. In 2009, the University of Oxford ran a groundbreaking digitization project focused on getting members of the public to digitally capture, submit, catalogue, and assign usage rights to material they personally held to do with the First World War. The results demonstrated the potential of this approach to save money compared with traditional digitization projects. It also revealed that community collections could capture a wealth of hitherto undiscovered material held in private hands. (Contains 3 figures and 2 endnotes.)