WWII Map Comes Home After 73 Years: Conservation and Digitization of a Soldier’s Legacy

October 1, 2020/in Client Story, Digital Restoration, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

[Above: Anderson Archival’s digitized copy of the map displayed on a monitor with the original conserved map laid out on the table below.]

Working with historical documents means that Anderson Archival is privy to many valuable stories. The impact of these tales is often deeply personal as well as bearing a cultural impact. We recently completed work creating high resolution images to digitize an oversized World War II map. The global impact of this document is clear—one side of the map bears a narrative that tracks the movement of the 83^rd Infantry Division from Normandy in June 1944 to Germany at the end of the war. The other, a detailed map, bears the signatures of the infantrymen it was gifted to, including the recent owner’s beloved father, S/Sgt Myron H. Miller.

But the personal impact doesn’t end there.

Founding Principal Amy Anderson recalls, “When I heard their story second hand, I just knew we had to write about it!” And thankfully, S/Sgt Miller’s children, Myra, Lynette, Marshall, Del, and Ken, were more than willing to share the incredible one-in-a-million tale of the map that made it back to their family “73 years later via a Frenchman.”

Anderson Archival: What do you know about your father’s involvement with the map?

The Miller Children: We know that the map was printed after the war ended as a gift to the soldiers of the 83^rd Infantry Division in September 1945. It commemorated their service as a unit from Normandy, June 1944, to Zerbst, Germany, and the end of the war. With the fighting over, they had occupation duty as military police restoring order in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Of the eleven buddies who signed the map, two joined Company K as replacements on the same day in July 1944 in Normandy—our father Myron H. Miller and James V. Cocola—and they ended the war together. Sgt. Hutchinson appears with them in a photo our dad saved. The others joined January 1945 and later. By those final days together they must have been very close.

Pfarrkirchen, Germany. Sunday, July 29, 1945. Sgt. Hutchinson and S/Sgt. Miller are on the left. Image used with permission.

AA: How did the Frenchman you reference come to be in possession of the map?

MC: Antoine Noslier, an expert on the history of the war in Brittany specializing in the 83^rd Infantry Division, residing in St. Malo, France, purchased the map on eBay in 2011, about five years before meeting our family. He bought the map sight unseen because it was described to have original autographs on it.

Myra was advised to contact the expert Antoine for information as she was planning the family’s trip in 2016 to follow our dad’s footsteps through France, Belgium, and Germany. Antoine had been recommended as a reliable authority on military actions in Brittany. Myra, Ken, Del, and Marshall wanted to find the location in St. Malo (Brittany) where their father had pulled his wounded buddy out of the street after he had been hit by a sniper.

Just a few weeks prior to our arrival in St. Malo, Antoine was working on another project when he pulled out the map to check another name (James V. Cocola) that he remembered was on the map. His eyes landed on the name “S/Sgt Myron H. Miller, Dixon, Missouri” and he was amazed. He contacted Myra to confirm that our father was from Dixon, Missouri. Then he described the map he had—with our father’s signature. We were floored.

That summer, after we arrived in France and met Antoine, he took us into his kitchen—where he had the map spread out on his table. We took photos of the signature and sent them to our sister Lynette (who was not on the trip) to confirm the handwriting. She was 100% positive it was our father’s.

Then he described the map he had—with our father’s signature. We were floored.”

AA: What do you know about the process and reasoning behind returning the map to you?

MC: When Antoine showed the map to us, we were simply thrilled to see it and took many photos. We did not ask for the map from Antoine, as he had purchased it for research.

The following summer, Myra returned to St. Malo leading a Footsteps Researchers tour, and Antoine presented the map to her as a gift to the family. It was quite a gift. We are very grateful and thankful to have the map in the family.

Antoine Noslier presents the Miller children with the map. Left to Right: Myra Miller, Del Miller, Antoine Noslier, Marshall Miller, Ken Miller. Image used with permission.

AA: What plans do you have for the conserved map in the future?

MC: We have had the map professionally restored and preserved by NS Conservation in a frame that allows viewing of both sides.

We believe we have a valuable piece of World War II history and an heirloom to be displayed and treasured by the family. We will have replicas made from the digital copies to use for display at our speaking engagements and book signings with our new book Soldiers’ Stories: A Collection of WW2 Memoirs, Volume II, and with Footsteps Researchers. It is important that we stop further damage to the map and showcase our father’s signature and those of his buddies.

We also want to send a copy of the map to Antoine Noslier as a gift since he gave the original to us.

AA: What lead you to Noah Smutz/NS Conservation?

MC: Our family friend from Philadelphia, Robert “Bob” McNabb, searched the Internet for someone in St. Louis who could do a professional job. Bob’s father, James McNabb, fought with the 83^rd Infantry Division, Company K, with our father, and he has a strong interest in World War II history. Bob called Noah secretly and got information, then he told me to call after he felt Noah was right for the job.

Smutz, in turn, directed the family to Anderson Archival for the creation of digital images. In addition to the work itself, we are grateful to Smutz, and to the children of S/Sgt Myron H. Miller, Dixon, Missouri, Company K, 331^st Infantry, 83^rd Infantry Division, for allowing us to be a part of this one-in-a-million story and to share it with our readers.

What family stories can Anderson Archival help you safequard? Contact us today for more information about how we can help you connect the dots and digitally preserve your family’s historical artifacts.

Quotables: 6 Steps to Going Paperless in Light of COVID-19 (CEO Blog Nation)

June 22, 2020/in Disaster Recovery, Document Scanning, Paperless Office, Quotables /by Anderson Archival

Founding Principal Amy Anderson’s post in CEO Blog Nation covers the basics of moving to a paperless office. This process can feel confusing or downright overwhelming, especially if you don’t know what your goals are or how to start.

Click here to read the full article!

Do you have a historical document collection that you’d like to make more accessible, relevant, and impactful? Anderson Archival uses proprietary methods to digitize collections so they are easily searchable, ultimately accessible, and even more meaningful to a wide audience. Let us help you preserve your legacy today! Give us a call at 314.259.1900 or email us at info@andersonarchival.com.

What are Quotables? This is a category in our posts to highlight any professional publications that benefit from our expert archivist experience and quote us in articles for their readers.

Quotables: 9 Ways Going Digital Can Increase Your Business’s Value (Home Business Mag)

January 8, 2020/in Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Paperless Office, Quotables /by Anderson Archival

Farica Chang’s post in Home Business Mag outlines the benefits of digitizing a business.

Through proper digital preservation techniques, your scanned documents can contain metadata tagging, optical character recognition (OCR), and other tools to make your data easily searchable by anyone in your company. Quick search and reliable digital provenance are a boon to all aspects of your business. This includes maintaining brand authenticity, and storytelling to product innovation, and to legal and compliance support.

Click here to read the full article!

What are Quotables? This is a category in our posts to highlight any professional publications that benefit from our expert archivist experience and quote us in articles for their readers.

Quotables: 5 Steps for Organizing Your Paperless Office (Young Upstarts)

December 3, 2019/in Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Paperless Office /by Anderson Archival

Principal Farica Chang’s guest blog for Young Upstarts stresses the importance of planning and security when moving to a paperless office—or starting an archival project.

Some questions to help direct your planning stage are the following:

What exactly do you want to digitize? Which physical copies will be shredded and what will be preserved? What do you want the digital folder hierarchy to look like? Are you going to scan in-house or outsource the job?

Click here to read the full article!

What are Quotables? This is a category in our posts to highlight any professional publications that benefit from our expert archivist experience and quote us in articles for their readers.

Quotables: Digital Archives (Grit Daily)

November 21, 2019/in Document Scanning, Preservation, Quotables /by Anderson Archival

Principal Farica Chang shared the importance of digitizing your “docs and pics” with Grit Daily.

While you might not have an original draft of the Declaration of Independence lying around, your collection—whether it contains historical newspapers or your grandparents’ letters from the war—has value to you and to the future.

Click here to read the full article!

What are Quotables? This is a category in our posts to highlight any professional publications that benefit from our expert archivist experience and quote us in articles for their readers.

5 Factors That Can Affect the Timeframe of Your Archival Project

October 1, 2019/in Backup and Storage, Custom Software, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

Is it finally time to kick off that digitization project you’ve been delaying for so long?

Many collectors don’t realize how much time and planning go into digitizing a box of old photo albums, let alone a collection that fills an entire room or basement. If you’re applying for funding to help your or your organization’s rainy day dream become reality, you’ll need to have some idea of the amount of time it will take to do it right.

How much time should you plan to spend digitizing before you see the end result? Or, more likely, how long should you expect your archival team to keep and analyze your collection until you have the final digitized project in your hand?

A quality archival company is well-versed in the variables that affect the time it takes to see your project through to the end. Doing it right the first time is going to take more time than a lower-quality job that will need to be re-done in a few years. Every collection has its own needs, quirks, and significance. Here are four of the most common factors that determine how long it will take to complete your digitization project.

Handling and Scanning Materials

The time it takes to physically process the individual materials in your collection is an important factor to consider. The size and composition of the collection determine how the materials should be handled at every point in the process. Unless you work in-house, your collection will need to be transported to the scanning facilities (and eventually back to you).

Historical paper documents, especially those severely damaged or suffering from acid deterioration, require the gentlest touch at every step of the project.

Once in-house, a trained team carefully categorizes each document and prepares it for scanning, which may include a page-by-page examination to note any handwriting marks, rips, or smudges. This process can take hours or weeks to complete, depending on the breadth of your collection.

Scanning the materials is also a much more delicate task than one might think. Unlike an amateur photo album scanning job, professional archival scanning goes beyond slapping a document into a home/office scanner bed and calling it a day. An archivist must observe each page that feeds through the enterprise-grade scanner, taking care to prevent any wrinkles or jams before they occur and damage the original. Bound collections require specialized scanning cradles that photograph pages while preserving the binding and delicate materials that would otherwise be destroyed in a traditional scanner.

Image Cleanup

Once your collection is scanned, the real digital work begins! Historical documents almost always have some sort of blemish; changes in paper quality and printing standards are to thank for that. While copies of the original image can be kept, it is useful to have working copies that can be adjusted for maximum use by the end user. In order to get the cleanest possible result—and fewer headaches during the proofing process—the newly-digitized images are combed over and cleaned in a graphic editing program.

Depending of the needs of the project, archivists can simply erase speckles or splotches that would interrupt the proofing process or perform character or full-text replacements for missing or damaged sections of text. Document age, page size, image resolution, scan quality, and level of adherence to the original material need to be considered to accurately calculate the length of time needed for this step. Not all collections need or want this step, but it’s often necessary for the longevity and use of the final product.

OCR and Proofing

Optical character recognition (OCR) is an essential part of most digitization projects and cannot be rushed. Being patient during the image cleanup steps pays off by providing cleaner images to process during OCR. Proofing relies on both human and digital eyes, a partnership that can sometimes prove time-consuming.

Older texts often use outdated language and fonts, which can confuse modern text recognition programs.

The human archivists on the other side of the screen inspect any flagged letters or symbols and compare to the original text to confirm accuracy.

With trickier collections, or those needing a character-for-character replication of the original, additional human-eye passes may be needed for precision of detail. Rare cases could require spoken or audio passes, which can add a significant chunk of time to the project duration, but also greatly enhance the quality of the end product.

Tagging and Organization

Building search features into a collection is a lengthy process, but necessary for any collection that may one day be used for study or research. This is accomplished by tagging a document’s metadata during the digitization process. By marking authors, dates, and section types, users can not only search a text for exact keywords but also for these specific features.

Formatting your collection is more than the “finishing touches” it implies. You as the collector will need to reflect on what you want your end product to look like. How will you use it? How will your target audience?

Even collectors who just want digital image replications of their collection cannot ignore this step. The Library of Congress outlines the sustainability of digital formats, so you can ensure the time you’ve invested in this project won’t have to repeated in the future.

Context of Collection

Okay, okay—so this isn’t really a timeframe factor as much as it is one of the proprietary values Anderson Archival infuses into every digitization project that comes through our doors.

But it is an absolutely crucial one when it comes to doing it right the first time. We’ve written before about how much time gets wasted by improper digitization strategies. Understanding the full cultural, historical, and personal context of your collection guarantees success in every step of the process.

It takes knowing everything possible about the collection to catch pages missed during the scanning or find a misprint of an author’s name during proofing. Realizing a step too late that an entire chapter of a document is missing from your copy and a replacement needs to be found could set the project back. The extra time it takes to understand your collection pay big dividends in the end.

Anderson Archival is dedicated to turning your collection into a usable digitized archive—no matter how much detail is involved. To discuss the timeframe of your next digitization project, contact us today!

Transcription from the Crowd: Three Success Stories

September 17, 2019/in Custom Software, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

The cost of paying for expert text recognition, proofreading, and quality assurance do not need to be prohibitory barriers to the completion of a digital library, recent stories show.

Projects ranging from preserving digital records of the stars to documenting the civil rights and suffrage movements have employed volunteers to transcribe historical documents. Whether dedicated researchers with a vested interest in the final product or a stranger offering a moment of time and effort, volunteer transcribers provide an essential service that ensures collections are accessible and searchable without a huge price tag.

Crowdsourcing volunteers is not new, not even for transcription work. Since 2012, the National Archives’ Citizen Archivist program has utilized a nearly unlimited workforce of internet users to transcribe historical documents, add metadata tags, and review changes made by other volunteers.

Part of what Anderson Archival offers is the integrity of treating your collection as our own – and for some collections, crowdsourcing the text recognition process can be an incredible solution to a lack of funding, or desire to involve the public.

Three such crowdsourced digitization and transcription projects already prove the capabilities of a large group of volunteers.

Involving specially-trained volunteers in some cases or strangers around the world also directly ties the public to the welfare of the collection.

Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH)

Not long ago, Anderson Archival wrote about the digitization of this spectacular collection. Since 2014, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has asked digital volunteers for help transcribing material related to Harvard observatory’s glass plates. This collection, known as Project PHaEDRA, includes logbooks and findings related to the DASCH glass plates analyzed by notable women in science history, such as Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, and Antonia Maura.

Transcription will allow the collection to be fully text-searchable and provides crucial contextual data about the 500,000 glass plate photographs of the night sky taken from 1885 to 1992. Without transcription of these data sets, accurate digital modeling of the scanned plates is not possible.

The collection of glass plates along with notebooks of findings will provide an incredible look at the history of our sky and of astronomy.

#TranscribeBond with University of Virginia

In August of 2018, and again in 2019, residents of Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, and digital volunteers met for a “transcribe-a-thon” of civil rights activist Julian Bond’s writings. Previously, the papers were available only to students in person at the university library, but digitization efforts aim to make this collection available online.

Transcription efforts for this collection are ongoing. Digital volunteers can join the work at From the Page. At the time of this posting, more than three thousand of the 7,797 pages of Bond’s writings are transcribed.

The Library of Congress: By the People

The Library of Congress’ By the People project proves that a few minutes of your time can impact future historical research and reference. By the People was launched in 2018, and collections relating to Abraham Lincoln, women’s suffrage, and the Civil War continue to be featured.

The digitization and transcription of these collections mean that countless pages will be available digitally and fully searchable for the first time, ensuring that the history they contain is accessible to all.

For volunteers fascinated with history, By the People has enough variety to keep anyone entertained and learning while they transcribe.

Crowdsourcing Saves Costs and Enriches the World

A solution like one of these might be possible for your collection. The cost of expert handwriting transcription, proofreading, and quality assurance may feel too high for some collection owners. A volunteer workforce can save money when this is the case!

Involving specially-trained volunteers in some cases or strangers around the world also directly ties the public to the welfare of the collection.

Crowdsourcing does have its downsides. As illustrated by the three examples above, even with millions of potential volunteers, the time taken to process documents greatly increases. In addition, a digital transcription framework may need to be purchased or developed. If a digitization project has limits on timeframe, or if leaving the accuracy of your collection to the public is a concern, crowdsourcing may not be right for you.

As with any project involving the public, your success may vary, and this is something to consider in the planning process, but crowdsourcing transcription provides an interesting alternative to the traditional model.

Anderson Archival provides all aspects of historical document digitization, including expert transcription, proofreading, and quality assurance. Are you looking for a digitization company that will treat your collection as their own? Contact Anderson Archival today.

Learn: Scanning 411

August 1, 2019/in Document Scanning /by Anderson Archival

Learn all about scanning, backups, and what makes Anderson Archival’s approach different in our new scanning explainer.

Scanning 411

The Path to Funding Your Archival Project

April 30, 2019/in Digital Collections, Document Scanning, General, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

You have big dreams and your organization has a big impact on communities, but sometimes you run into big roadblocks when funding your projects. Some of your projects include protecting and preserving documented history, which is our mission as well, so we know how important it is to be able to fund those projects. Asking for money can be hard, and can be a daunting task, especially when you need to raise a substantial amount.

However, you aren’t alone in this process! When you partner with a trusted archival company, they will be with you every step of the way. Here’s the three-step path we recommend for funding your archival projects.

Tell Your Story

This is the single-most important foundational factor when funding your project. Telling your story establishes who you are and why you exist. What problems are you solving in your community, and why can’t it thrive without you? What resources do you make available? What collections are you preserving for historical research and future generations?

Don’t just tell your story. Share it in such a compelling way that your readers will want to jump on your band wagon, hail their friends, and enthusiastically dive into the work you’re doing. For this, social media can be incredibly productive. Creating videos, online events, groups, and pages will help capture interest and followers. Many archival companies can also assist in creating a web presence that matches the upcoming project or archive!

Part of telling your story is listing your goals for the future. When you ask for funding, make sure you explain why you need money and how it will be used, which is something your archival company can help you with. Be specific. Why do you need it to impact the community? And don’t forget to tell why your partnership is important.

Ask for Donations from Private Donors

Whether it’s time or money, people are more likely to give when asked directly. Review your donor list and identify a handful of friends or donors who align best with the goals of the project. These are the donors who are moved by your mission and purpose. Use the old-fashioned method of mailing personal letters. Call potential donors on the phone and set up a meeting. Tell your story, explain your need and tell them why you thought of them, how their values align with yours, how they can help, and that they will directly impact a need.

People want to be needed. If you can outline exactly how a prospective donor can help, they will be more likely to invest, and personally asking people and being prepared to answer their questions will establish a foundation of trust.

Historic works are always at risk of damage due to accidents or simply handling the documents, which makes digital library preservation imperative. Explaining that preserving these documents is of utmost importance, and laying out exactly what will be lost if these documents aren’t preserved digitally will paint an honest picture of why you need the help of donors.

Partner with a trusted archival company who will help you communicate with those outside of your organization. They will help educate and energize your key donors on the possibilities and benefits of your digital archiving project.

You are not alone in this process. Your archival partner can provide demonstrations, presentations, and education. They will explain the importance of archival quality and doing your project right the first time.

Apply for Grants

Did you know that both the private sector and the government have grants available for library preservation?

Applying for grants might be a little intimidating. A grant proposal is involved, and there are so many, many grants to apply for. Where should you start? How does receiving funds from foundations work?

Applying for grants takes more specialized expertise than marketing. In fact, it might be helpful to hire a grant writer. Again, you may have to spend money to make money. Charitable requests, whether government or not, aren’t just for giving away free money. Your mission must be aligned with their mission, and a grant writer will help you apply in a way that appeals to this connection. If you still want to go through the process yourself, you can find many guides, including this simple step-by-step guide.

Grants can be worth incredibly large sums, and there are a surprising number of grants available for nonprofits and libraries.

Don’t stop there!

You can use any or all of these strategies. Some build on each other, and each compliments the rest. Now all you have to do is continue to build your relationships. Make sure you thank your donors and invest in working relationships with them. This will remain important for future projects. You want your donor to take ownership of projects and be just as dedicated as you are. Don’t just use their money. Show them how they’re directly helping, which can be as simple as sending out regular newsletters or taking time to have personal conversations.

At Anderson Archival, we know how important preserving historical collections is for future generations, and we want to help you create the best digital collection possible. On occasion, our customers ask us to meet with significant donors to explain the benefits of creating a digital library and we have found this to be effective. Call us today at 314.259.1900 or email us at info@andersonarchival.com for more information on ways to fund your archival project and how to build a digital library!

Anderson Technologies

How It All Began: The Start of Anderson Archival

April 16, 2019/in Custom Software, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation /by Anderson Archival

Before Anderson Archival, there was Anderson Technologies. It might seem strange that an IT company would branch into digital archiving, but the story behind this expansion showcases what clients of both firms know about us: integrity, dedication, and client focus are core values at the heart of all we do. Our hallmarks include expertise and quality service because your satisfaction is how we define our success.

Anderson Archival came to fruition because we learned the hard way that sometimes to do a job right, you really must do it yourself.

The First Project

As Anderson Technologies, we provide far more than managed IT services support. When a client approached us years ago to digitize a large collection of documents for research purposes, we utilized our technical management capabilities to facilitate the project.

Identifying appropriate partners in the required disciplines to properly execute the project was harder than we anticipated. We eventually teamed with a local vendor to scan and restore the images and handle the optical character recognition (OCR) to convert pictures to text before we performed the document data tagging, software engineering, and quality assurance.

As the vendor delivered data to us, we identified numerous quality issues. They produced work that was not up to the high standards we needed for the collection. Missing pages, poor scan quality, and inaccurate conversion to digital text caused us to double check everything and send a great deal back to be redone. As the project continued, we realized we could have done things correctly the first time by bringing the tasks in-house.

The Problem

The experience taught us a great deal about digitization services, and we learned it takes more than technology to create a quality digital library. Anyone can get the best scanners or software on the market, but without dedicated employees, efficient systematization, the proper work environment, and an unflagging commitment to quality, the end result suffers.

For example, we later discovered the vendor only required a high school education for its staff. The goal of these workers, who were crammed together elbow-to-elbow in a conference room, wasn’t to produce the best product they could, but to push pages out the door as quickly as possible.

We also learned they didn’t have the necessary tools to facilitate the detailed quality control needed for the images. Though their scanners and software were excellent, their monitors were too small to display the entire page without being zoomed out so far that the image became useless for a quality check.

By the time the project was complete, we learned many lessons on how not to digitize historical documents for quality search results. When another client approached us with a project to digitize historical documents, we knew using traditional scanning vendors would produce inaccurate results. This time, we were going to do it ourselves and do it right.

More Than Just Scans

There is far more to digitizing a precious collection than simply scanning the pages. Our clients want extremely accurate search results, which means the images must be converted to text via OCR and labels (or tags) need to be inserted to guide the search engine to produce relevant feedback. This requires not only the correct software, but a great deal of time and attention to detail by those transforming the data. It is important to select a firm who will treat your collection with the same focus and enthusiasm you do. Working with a third party who doesn’t cherish the opportunity to preserve your documents causes the end result to suffer dramatically.

Keep an eye on our blog to see how we applied these lessons and expanded into the business of historical document digitization. If you want to turn your collection into a quality digital library with the most accurate search results, contact Anderson Archival today at info@andersonarchival.com or by phone at 314.529.1900.

Don’t stop there!

Follow us