The goals of SWORP were to: copy manuscripts related to western Oregon Tribes from distant archival repositories and bring them to Oregon. Many ethnographic records created by researchers in anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and other fields are stored in archives throughout the world. The Smithsonian Institution and the National Archives holds perhaps the most extensive such collections in the world related to native people of western Oregon. Copying these records and bringing them to Oregon, and creating a collection at the University of Oregon makes these records readily accessible to Native people and scholars of Oregon Indian ethnohistory.
Tveskov, Whereat, Lewis, Hockema having lunch near the National Archives, Summer 1998.
It took hundreds of hours for the two teams of researchers to scan, mark, and copy the manuscripts in SWORP. Before, scholars of Oregon Indian ethnohistory had to arrange funding and time to go to Washington, D.C. to gain access to these records. The record systems at the National Archives are incredibly extensive and complex and a single researcher may have spent years looking for all of the records that SWORP has gathered together. Now, scholars can come to the University of Oregon, a central place in the state, to access this collection.