Exploring Family History Worry-Free

POW belt buckle. Image provided by Christopher Parrish and used with permission.  By Team Lead Marcia Spicer While much of the country braced for a pre-Christmas polar vortex and snowstorm, I got to speak with Christopher and Molly Parrish via Teams from our respective homes. The Anderson Archival team has fond memories of digitizing their […]

Reconnecting with Corporate History Through a Functional Archive

By Andrea Glazer What do local historians and corporations around the country have in common? One answer: a passion for historical corporate legacy. St. Louis-based Guarantee Electrical Company has been lighting up communities since its inception in 1902 to power the 1904 World’s Fair. Over a century later, Guarantee continues to impact not only the […]

World Digital Preservation Day

world digital preservation day 2022

by Shana Scott The first Thursday in November is World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD). This year that falls on November 3rd.  WDPD is a way to celebrate digital preservation’s contributions to the archival community. If you’d like to join in the celebration, the Digital Preservation Coalition has lots of suggestions and ways to participate and […]

Hit by Flooding? Here Are 3 Things You Can Do Now

Hit by flooding

by Marcia Spicer Plus: two ways you can prepare for the future to conclude National Preparedness Month  The summer of 2022 has been a season of unexpected flooding for many areas, including our own here in St. Louis, Missouri. Many of our friends and neighbors experienced damage and loss—placing this particular natural disaster at the […]

Preventing the Worst-Case Scenario

national preparedness month

by Marcia Spicer Ask any archivist, collector, or researcher who works with historical materials what their worst nightmare is, and you’ll probably get a few variations of the same answer. Total loss and destruction of a collection, history, language, people… you can’t get much worse.  Yes, recovery techniques have dramatically improved over the last 100 […]

ARMA St. Louis Honors Anderson Archival and Anderson Technologies

ARMA

by Marcia Spicer Last month, we celebrated the conclusion of the 2021-2022 season of ARMA St. Louis’s programming. The local chapter of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, along with the nationwide organization, is made of records management professionals, working in industries as varied as electricity, finance, archives, and—you guessed it—digitization. For the last […]

Unrecoverable: The National Personnel Records Center Fire

Water Damage

by Marcia Spicer Within the archival community, some disasters are legendary—infamous not only in their scope but in the way they affect policy, inspire innovation, and produce lasting repercussions.  One such disaster is the National Personnel Records Center fire on July 12, 1973. Despite taking place almost 50 years ago, the anniversary of this fire […]

Practical Tips for Document Longevity

physical archives may benefit from digitization

by Marcia Spicer Are you a proud owner of historical material written by or to famous individuals? Perhaps your collection isn’t recognizable to the public but impacts your family or community. Preserving these documents for future generations can be a daunting task for the new or unprepared collector. Too often, collectors inheriting these materials are […]

Learn: Digital Preservation vs. Digitization

It may feel like the terms “digital preservation” and “digitization” are interchangeable, but it’s better to think of them as fingers and thumbs. All thumbs may be fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. Digitization is the thumb and digital preservation are the fingers. Digitization is necessary to the overall function of digital preservation, but […]

Learn: What is a Digital Collection or Digital Library?

Whether you’re a researcher, student, librarian, or bibliophile, it’s likely you’ve accessed a digital collection or enjoyed a digital library. Using these convenient resources may lead you to wonder how to make your own collection sharable online. Learn about the concepts of digital collections and digital libraries in this Anderson Archival explainer. What Is a […]