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Historical collections need preservation plans

More Than Digital: Building a Preservation Plan

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There are so many things to consider when choosing to preserve a collection, both in digital and physical format. Though the needs of digital preservation are not the same as those of physical preservation, it’s important to keep both sides in mind when building a preservation plan. Neglecting one could reduce quality and access to digital files, while ignoring the other could lead to document deterioration or complete destruction. Whether you’re a private collector or a large organization, having a thought-out preservation plan can increase the quality and longevity of your collection.

What Is a Preservation Plan?

A preservation plan is more than simply choosing where to store your collection or which items should be digitized first. A proper preservation plan should consider everything required to care for and maintain your collection’s physical and digital materials.

Simply having a preservation plan doesn’t mean that all is perfect in your collection.

Short-, medium-, and long-term goals keep your preservation plan evolving with the needs and best practices of the preservation industry.

With a plan as comprehensive as this, where do you even start?

Assessment of Your Preservation Needs

Until you know what you have, you can’t know how to preserve it. What’s called a “preservation needs assessment” is a great way to start building your preservation plan. By analyzing the work you’re already doing to care for and maintain your collection, alongside any problems that might have been overlooked, you can determine which steps you need to take right away and what you can address as time and funding permit to ensure the continued stability and accessibility of your collection.

A preservation needs assessment should include, but is not limited to:

  • A complete overview of the collection, including quantity, type, and condition of materials.
    • Note special requirements needed to house or preserve certain material types. Some materials could be at risk of fire, fading, or deterioration in non-ideal conditions.
    • Note items in need of repair and conservation treatment.
    • Look at how often the collection is used and which items are accessed repeatedly or not at all.
  • A walkthrough of the interior and exterior of any building(s) that stores your collection.
    • Look for cracks in the foundation, mold growth, insect or rodent activity, and any hazardous conditions that could cause manmade damage, such as exposed wiring near flammable materials.
    • Document what protections are in place to regulate the environment, react to emergency situations, or secure the collection against theft and unauthorized use.
  • An assessment of the storage materials housing the collection.
    • Check how many items are stored in acid-free, archival quality boxes or folders.
    • Note any damaged boxes or improper storage methods currently being used, such as items stacked together without any storage medium or oversized items crammed into spaces that are too small to fit them.
    • Document any items in need of immediate rehousing to safer storage materials.
  • An analysis of the care and handling procedures staff and patrons use when accessing the collection.
    • Determine if there are clear and written procedures for people to follow and if those procedures are satisfactory to the care of the collection.
    • Test how well staff are trained in these procedures.
    • See if staff has been trained in emergency response to natural or man-made disasters.
  • An overview of any digital materials in the collection.
    • Note whether these are born digital, digital copies of items physically in the collection, or digital copies of items not physically in the collection.
    • Check the file extensions of all digital items and the staff’s ability to access the information in those file types.
    • Record where the digital collection is located, on what medium it is saved, and how many copies of it exist.
    • Determine if digital materials are being used to prevent overhandling of the physical collection.
    • Note any present or future digitization efforts already in place, or if digitization is a viable option to reduce handling of the collection.

Each preservation needs assessment is different depending on the collection being assessed, but when you’re done, you’ll have the necessary information to create a preservation plan. During this process, carefully consider your priorities for remedying any issues the preservation needs assessment found. Dividing all remediation needs into short-, medium-, or long-term goals can help with prioritization.

  • What can be done immediately and with little to no cost?
  • What can be done in a reasonable time frame or might require adjusting your budget?
  • What must wait until sufficient staff or money is available?
  • What must be done immediately even though it will require putting off more easily completed remediation?

A preservation plan shouldn’t only focus on what needs to be fixed.

It should also include how you plan to continue the care and maintenance of all aspects that don’t need remediation. It should include policies on how to handle, grow, and access your collection. The more you have written down in clear language, the easier it will be to teach everyone using the collection what needs to be done and how to do it the right way. After all, the goal of a preservation plan is to keep your collection safe and in use for all who need it.

Get Help with Your Preservation Plan

Conservators across the country are skilled in performing preservation needs assessments and assisting in remediation of issues. Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)’s course on preservation plans is invaluable if you decide to undertake this process yourself, or conservators are ready to partner with you to make the process easier. If you’re not certain you can afford a conservator, many grants cover preservation needs assessments for collections.

Once you’re ready to take action, it can help to work with a conservator for physical preservation remediation or a digitization vendor to ensure that digital copies of your collection are captured to archival standards.

 

Do you need help digitizing your collection as part of your preservation plan?

 

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Capturing these photographs was essential

Who Can You Trust with Your History?

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Recent Anderson Archival client Steve Brunkhorst found himself the caretaker of four old family albums. Like many others in the same situation, he didn’t know how to share the collection with his family in a way that was fair and sustainable for the materials.

But the biggest challenge was finding someone he knew he could trust with his collection during the project. Steve didn’t want to ship the albums to someone he didn’t know, because these were important family heirlooms. He wanted to find a digital preservation firm that would take personal accountability for his collection.

Even home collectors with amateur scanning experience can benefit from reaching out to a digitization firm to ensure they have the longest lasting file formats and image quality. We sat down with Steve to talk about trusting in the process, trusting that the physical items will be well taken care of, and trusting in the enhancement and digital versions of this history.

AA: Can you describe the collection and its significance to you?

My mother passed away last year at 93 years. She had a very long, very healthy, and pretty happy life. I live in St. Louis, so I ended up with many of her cherished possessions, including this collection of [four] photo albums. One was put together by her mother, one was hers, one was my father’s, and one was my mother and father’s from the time they met until the time they started having children.

Four albums filled with family memories

Four albums filled with family memories. Image from Steve Brunkhorst’s collection and used with permission.

AA: That’s a lot of history in just four albums! I’m sure they piqued the curiosity of other family members too. Did that influence your decision to digitize them?

I have a brother and two sisters. Everyone has some interest in these old photo albums, so this was a problem staring me in the face. I was trying to find a way to share the albums in a way that was equitable and could be appreciated and easily accessible. And I do have a little bit of knowledge about scanning. I’ve got a fairly good amateur flatbed scanner, and I’m interested in photography a little bit, so I have Photoshop Elements, which allows you to correct images.

AA: With that knowledge, what was your original vision for digitizing the albums?

 I had some knowledge of what I wanted done, but I knew I did not want to do it myself for a couple of reasons. One, my flatbed scanner does not have a large enough bed for the size of some of the albums. [Also] one of the albums did not come apart, as it was bound. And the third reason was, I just simply didn’t want to put that much work into it myself.

I knew there were scanning companies where you would send a shoebox full of photos in and they’d send you something back. I was looking for a local company because I did not really want to take these irreplaceable albums and put them in the mail to someone I did not know. I was hoping I would [physically] hand [over] my documents and feel like there was some personal accountability rather than putting a box in the mail.

AA: Did you receive that personal touch you were looking for?

This [project] was being done while COVID was still a big concern. I did not actually enter your facility beyond the entry lobby, but I was just blown away. [Principal Mark Anderson] came over and talked to me a little bit and gave me a lot of confidence that I was for sure in the right place.

AA: Can you tell me more about what the digitization process was like from your perspective?

The idea was that I’ll give [the albums] to my brother and two sisters in the digital format, so this was a dilemma of how to do that. The dilemma [could be] solved by scanning everything, so everybody gets everything in a digital format, and then each of the brothers and sisters gets another piece in the old historical legacy format.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted in the way of PDFs or JPEGs. [Content Specialist Marcia Spicer] offered a standard package of PDFs and JPEGs at different scan densities and even TIFFs. That was something that I didn’t know to request, but due to her experience, it was offered. That worked out very well.

AA: I know that one album could not be easily unbound, and a handful of photographs throughout the albums had silvering issues from age. What was your approach to these physical challenges during digitization of this collection?

What happened is that Marcia sent me some test [images] and scans. Some were just pretty neutral scans how the equipment was able to digitize, and then there were some enhancements. I looked at the enhancements, and what I found even at home doing some digitization on these photos was that, depending on the condition of the photo, that different photos would require different kinds of enhancements to improve them a bit.

Family Photo with Silvering

Image degradation with silvering

Family Photo Edited to Reduce Silvering

Silvering minimized through editing

Another Family Photo with Silvering

Image degradation with silvering

Photo Edited to Reduce Silvering

Silvering minimized through alternate capture angles

AA: How would you say the digital versions of the albums helped you see the collection and its history in a new way?

[Before digitization] I had [only] glanced at these photos. My sister had looked at the albums with my mother to try to identify some of the people [in the photos], and she had stuck little post-it notes on the pages of the album. What I did is remove those notes, keeping track of which photos they were related to, which page they were on. After I received the PDFs [from Anderson Archival], I was able to use a PDF program called Nuance to insert digital comments on the pages. It looks really nice and was much nicer than scanning the post it notes.

Later on, I was looking page by page to make a few notes and understand [for] myself when these photos were taken. Looking at these photos kind of got me interested in going back to some other [historical family] documents I have scanned, to go back and understand what year these events happened. I was able to do that, going back to my digital files, finding dates, and other reference information, and then making small notes on the PDF version of the albums. That was something which I never thought I was going to do, but it kind of evolved out of it. I was giving them something that was as complete and interesting as it could be, so that turned out to be kind of a fun benefit of having the collection digitized.

Family Photo

Family Photo

Family Photo


Family Photo

Family Photo


Back then, the earliest photos were very small and not very crisp. Over the course of the photo albums, you can see the technology improves, the knowledge about how to take a photo and move [the camera] closer [to the subject]. In a way, you’re also seeing the evolution of photography.

AA: I hadn’t thought about it that way, but the movement through time is very apparent when looking at all the albums together. Did you learn anything new about your family from the digital albums?

I knew my grandmother pretty well when I was growing up, because my grandmother lived with my mother and father. It was more of an integrated family situation back then. I knew my grandmother from birth until I left home at 18 years old, but she was always this old grandmother to me. She wasn’t quite as old, really, as I know it now.

Looking back at her photograph album, I see photos of her and her friends with tennis racquets and cameras, in the park, in boats, and taking pictures, which is very much like social media today. I realized when my grandmother was younger, she was quite a hot young woman and her friends [were] very attractive. They were smiling and laughing and having a lot of fun. And I just never thought that about my grandmother until I looked back at these photographs and said, ‘Yeah, they were having a good time. They were having a nice life.’ That was kind of a rediscovery for me.

AA: How do you think your family will use the digital files going forward?

I’ve downloaded all of the digitized content onto my PC, and I purchased some thumb drives to store the files. [Each sibling] can send that thumb drive on to their children, who can also store it on their own electronic devices and have a copy of it. Even if they don’t look at it today, they’ll have it for some time in the future when they do.

AA: Thank you for trusting us with your collection and sharing your story. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I enthusiastically recommend that people [who] have documents, photographs, or anything else that needs to be organized get in touch with you and see what you can do for them. Everybody’s got a big cache of photo albums. People my age still don’t want to just throw things away without having some copy or some reference to it, so I’m looking forward to telling other people about Anderson Archival and showing them what I’ve received. Hopefully, it’s a solution for some other people to know.

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A variety of sources can be used to answer genealogy questions

Key Documents for Unlocking Your Family History

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Genealogists, whether professional or purely informal, know there is no true replacement for detailed family records and primary source documents. Predecessors with a mind towards preservation end up doing work for their progeny, providing essential names, dates, locations, and the answers to many other burning questions.

But let’s face it, most people researching their family’s exploits don’t have a ready-made cache of answers. And even if they’ve been carefully kept, historical documents may already be damaged beyond use simply because of their age.

Facing meager crumbs or resounding silence, what can the curious researcher do?

Start Your Search with a Firm Foundation

Diving into a family rumor or famous relative might be tempting, especially when you know you want to head towards those answers anyway. However, it is important to start any family research with a detailed account of yourself and your immediate family. As you build your initial database of information, designate any unconfirmed data and tackle each question mark one at a time.

This is also the time to reach out to living family members, both for confirmation of what you already know and for the knowledge—and documentation—they may have that you don’t. You might plan a trip with a portable scanner to capture material from family members who aren’t tech savvy themselves.

Remember that even if multiple family members agree, no point of data can be confirmed without evidence.

Something as fundamental as the spelling of a family name or a middle name can get lost between official record and familial communication. Decades of being called Rose doesn’t make it a legal name. Most genealogists insist on multiple forms of confirmational evidence to mark a point resolved.

As you begin to gather more material, it is important to stay organized. For physical documents, labeled file folders and a paper family tree are helpful. For digital copies, keep a finding aide and use a file structure that makes sense. Keep a master backup of any digital files, but don’t clutter your systems with multiple versions of the same files.

Choose a Focused Destination—Your Genealogy North Star

With a strong foundation in place, it’s time to regroup on the goals you have for your search. This will likely be a long and involved search. Aimlessly collecting anything and everything, while fascinating, could unintentionally hamper progress towards your real goal.

When deciding what to focus on first, consider the types of resources you will have access to. Are there church records you can request or a government archival center you can access? Do you have partial records you can build from? Do you have any names or dates you are certain of that you can start with rather than estimates or rumors that may be more difficult to verify? The answers to these types of questions can help you decide the best path to begin your genealogical hunt.

With your goal in mind, trace a path from what you already have to what you want. Include the details you do know, such as a major migration or any key figures. From there, you can start filling in the blanks.

Sources in the Digital Realm

Whether you dive into those family question marks through a genetics or ancestry service or you prefer to search without any assistance, chances are some—or maybe even all—of your search will take place online. There are many guides and lists showcasing the best online access to vital records, military records, census information, and even immigration data, but make sure to research each service before you subscribe. There is no point paying for something that doesn’t have the kind of documents you need.

Verify names and dates with primary sources whenever possible, and don’t be discouraged if you find conflicting versions of the same information. The further back you go, the more nebulous some of the recorded information can be. Immigrant families may have changed their names when they moved to a new country, making one person seem like two, or birth years may appear slightly different depending on who recorded the information. Remember at each step in your journey to move slowly but surely in the direction of your goal.

If the evidence takes you in a direction contrary to family lore, such as a genetic test that removes the possibility of Native American lineage, it is important to follow what you find, rather than rumor.

Research exhaustively, but don’t get stuck on one person. Confirm all aspects of a person—birth, death, marriage—to paint a complete picture for your records. This may require the help of translators or historic institutions in your community. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Many times, the staff at archives are happy to help you hunt down property records, marriage certificates, and a plethora of other vital records that can help move you forward on your genealogical journey. Just remember that sometimes the records just aren’t there or you don’t know enough to search effectively. Keep researching what you can and don’t give up. You may come across information later that will help you search for the missing pieces again.

Don’t forget churches! The further back you go the harder it will be to find official records. For many communities, the church was the only place that recorded births, marriages, and deaths. Even if the church no longer exists, the denomination’s central organization may still have those records available.

Each additional piece of information you learn can help fill in other gaps.

Key Documents for Unlocking Your Family History

While you may not have a pile of vital records handy, there may be other key documents already in you or your family’s possession that can send you in the right direction for further research. To fully utilize your personal collection, consider information that could be gained from

For the job of keeping family documents pristine and also accessible, a digitization firm like Anderson Archival could provide essential help in this journey of exploration. Remember, physical copies won’t be around forever—age, continued use, and exposure can lead to deterioration. Too often, destruction of originals comes with the loss of the vital information they contain. If you have a collection that is too valuable to risk losing, give us a call today. We’re ready to help.

 

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Digitized Register for Cayuga Asylum

Adopting Digital Preservation for a Legacy of Caring

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Technology is so engrained in our everyday lives that it can be hard to imagine a time when the only evidence of one’s ancestry was a single handwritten line in an archive across the country. But before the age of virtual records and digital paper trails, this was the only option for some people hunting down their history—or the history of esteemed historical figures.

Anderson Archival sat down with Laurel Bennett, executive assistant at Cayuga Centers, a nonprofit founded in 1852 as a home for destitute children. Over the last 165 years, Cayuga Centers has become not only a temporary support system for children in need, but also an organization that provides every kind of support possible for children and families regardless of circumstance.

This collection also has significance to history on a larger scale, but we’ll let Bennett explain in her own words.

 

AA: Can you tell our readers a little bit about Cayuga Centers’ history and mission?

[Cayuga Centers] started in the early 1860s as an orphanage. Three of the prominent families of Auburn, New York—one of which [were] the Sewards, who you might know through Henry Seward, the secretary of state to Abraham Lincoln. They saw a need for an orphanage so they created one [here].

Over the years, Cayuga Centers evolved into what it is today, which is a nonprofit that is chosen to help children, families, and individuals to grow at home. I’m going to read you our mission: ‘To grow as independent, healthy, and productive citizens through quality counseling, residential, and support services. We do this in partnership with those we serve, as well as government agencies and other social services providers.’

We have programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, we have our foster care programs in Florida, Delaware, and upstate New York and New York City, and our biggest program is actually our migrant foster care program for unaccompanied minors that come into the US without an adult. This is a big contract that we have with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

AA: That’s quite the task list! How did you end up working for Cayuga Centers?

I’ve been here for about a year and a half, and I’m the executive assistant to our president and CEO. What drew me to Cayuga Centers when I first got out of college was that they don’t just provide foster care for these children—they also provide counseling, they provide schooling, they provide any and everything that they need.

Cayuga Centers legacy of caring digitized

Cayuga’s legacy of caring dates far back in history. Image from Cayuga Centers’ collection and used with permission.

[The children] are at a disadvantage when they go through the foster care system, and that’s what really drew me into it. If I had children and somehow they got separated from me, I would want them to go to a Cayuga Centers foster home. For the children that come over the border, we make sure that they’re in a home that speaks their native language as well.

AA: How did you decide to reach out for digitization services?

One of my duties [when] I came into this job [was] to look after our archive, which is located in our headquarters in Auburn, New York. [It’s] this big old library, and before COVID happened, people liked to come in to view the records from back in the orphanage for genealogical purposes. Our staff also likes to look through them because they’re really cool old books. After researching how to properly store these [books] and what we can do to best preserve them, I found Anderson [Archival] and sent them off to be digitized.

AA: When you were looking for a digital preservation vendor to help you with this project, what specific challenges did you know going in that your collection would have?

They’re very fragile. When you look through them, some of the pages are falling out, some of them are torn up, some of them are very faded.

Finding a company that was able to capture the image and make sure it was the best it could [be] was really key for this particular collection.

I was looking at different providers, and you guys fit exactly what we needed. [Anderson Archival’s facilities] have everything in house. We can just send them to you and [know that] you take good care of the books. They are very fragile, they’re from the 1800s. You scan every page and then send us those files for us to keep on file for ourselves. I like that you guys are all in-house and just seem like a good reputable business. And that’s why we chose you.

AA: Did you learn anything new about your collection through digitization?

It’s a lot bigger than we originally thought it was. We see it and where it’s stored, and then seeing all the individual files…there’s so many of them. The books are a lot thicker than they look in real life.

Also, there was a prominent figure in Auburn who was the head of the orphanage, and they actually had an all-female board that ran it, which was very cool and rare for the time. I found that when looking through the old annual reports.

AA: If these books were available for the public to come in and look at, are the newly digitized files something that you’ll be using in that way?

Yeah, sometimes people have to get permission from us to come in to view them. But some people haven’t been able to come in because they’re from all over the country, and they have an ancestor that stayed in the orphanage and they wanted to come here and find their files. Now that they’re digitized, we can find the specific year and the register that their ancestor, parent, or grandparent lived in and can send that to them.

Also, we have staff from multiple locations throughout upstate New York, Delaware, and Florida. Not everyone has been able to come in and view the collection, so we make it available for our staff to be able to look through whenever they have the interest to. That’s something our staff would really like, to be able to see from wherever they are, especially because of COVID. People haven’t been able to travel as much as they used to.

AA: Are there any other ways that you foresee using the digital collection in the future?

One of our books actually has Harriet Tubman in it because she adopted a child who I believe is blind and that’s how she came to live with her and fostered her at home here in Auburn. Just looking through [the collection] one of our staff found [that record], and then we were able to find out that Harriet Tubman was involved in the early history of our agency, which is very cool.

Harriet Tubman appears in the Cayuga Register

Cayuga Centers’ relationship with Harriet Tubman displayed in this record. Identifying names have been redacted. Image used with permission.

It makes sense because Harriet Tubman was very involved with the Seward family and Auburn. I believe they were involved in the founding of the original orphanage, which was [originally] called the Cayuga Asylum for Destitute Children.

We want to think of a way that we can share it on our website, like the Harriet Tubman register or the scrapbook, for more particular interest to the agency and our history. We’re thinking of ways to share them with the public [too].

AA: Can you share any other stories about these personal connections to the past?

[There are a few stories of] people that have come in to view the collection that have been able to see parts of the digitized collection before it was finished. We had a woman whose aunt stayed at the orphanage as a child, and she wanted to try to find everything she could. They were going to the state to try to find her adoption papers and everything. Looking through the books, it was actually very hard to find her because your eyes miss things. But as it was digitized, I was actually able to find the exact page that her aunt was on, and I was able to print and send that page to them because it was digitized. They were out of state, so she was so grateful. Because the image was so clear I was able to print them out a blank one and then I also printed out one where I was able to highlight where she was in the page.

AA: That has to be really special for people, to have that physical manifestation of their ancestor. What other impacts has the digital collection had so far?

Another gentleman came in, and some of his cousins, I believe, stayed [at Cayuga]. He came in and was looking through the books but wasn’t able to find anything. But then, after it got digitized, I was then able to more easily find where they were. He said that he cried because he was so happy he was able to find more about them, because they actually had siblings that also came in through here.

A lot of people come in because they have some sort of family connection to Cayuga. There’s a big cemetery in Auburn where we have a few of the graves of the orphans that unfortunately died from illness when they were staying here, [and it’s] the same place the Sewards are buried, that Harriet Tubman is buried. A few years ago on our 165th anniversary, we had a little ceremony there.

AA: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Thanks so much for being interested in us, and thank you guys for doing a great job.

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Digitization captured this hidden love note

Love Letters Over Zoom: Connection in the Time of COVID

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The power of human connection is stronger than ever after such a disruptive year. It’s hard to feel close to loved ones when, over the course of a life, people spread out and go in their own directions. Historical collections can show us that those connections are still powerful and tangible even from afar.

We sat down to talk about this and more with Rosemary Cassie, one of Anderson Archival’s recent clients. Her collection of letters written by her father while he was on a US Navy minesweeper during the Korean war reminded us that the powerful connections we make in our lives can foster new connections, even after we are gone.

Now that the digitization of these love letters is complete, Cassie shares the collection virtually with her entire extended family. The group meets twice a month via Zoom and reads selections from the collection together and discuss the members of their family that left the record of their lifelong love behind.

AA: What’s it been like to be able to share the collection digitally with your entire family?

Since both my parents have passed, these letters were my way of kind of keeping us connected. When you lose the matriarch or the patriarch of a family, there’s really not that pull to stay together.

People don’t think a lot about building that connection with a family that’s dispersed, especially during a pandemic. What a role these letters have played in a time when we haven’t even been able to have a service or a mass for my mom. We’ve been able to have a memorial weekend—memorialized both of them, actually—in a way that probably we wouldn’t have done if we hadn’t been in the middle of a pandemic.

I download every year’s worth of letters from Box, and then share them with the family on Google Drive in small chunks. Then we all get on a Zoom call and discuss. When we’re on a particular letter or theme, I’ll open up to that letter, to that month, and we’ll make comments on it. We always start the call with the letters in mind, and then we always then transition to more things about what’s going on in our own lives, almost like our own video version of the letters.

This is my way of everybody getting the letters. Even some of my family who don’t choose to be part of the Zoom call are reading the letters. All my immediate siblings are participating, but it’s my nieces and nephews who are spread around the world that aren’t as involved. Now they have they have a part of our family’s history that they can keep.

AA: What was unique about the digitization process for this collection?

In addition to the letters themselves, the digitization team would photograph the big front and the back of the envelope for two reasons. The front of the envelopes have the post mark, and the back of the envelope would always have little love notes.

AA: On our end, the process of capturing these details ended up telling us a lot about your mother. She opened the envelopes with a letter opener, and occasionally made notes about the contents of the letter on the envelope itself. I remember the day one of our team members found a hidden love note that, from the way the envelope was opened, she had never seen. When our team member shared that find with the rest of us, we were floored. You can just feel how much love is in all those letters, even in a note that was never seen before.

Both my parents were pretty progressive as a couple. My mom and dad only knew each other three months before they got married, and he shipped out for two years.

Digitized letter on thin paper

The letter writer experiments with a typewriter.

AA: Wow. That’s a strong love, this young love built from three months.

Yeah, and it stayed that way, never veered away from that. I just I wish we had her side of the letters. My dad kept my mothers’ letters, so we only have one part of the story. We’re always trying to figure out, “What did my mom’s say?” But in a way, it kind of makes it more interesting to only have his because then you have to speculate or create your own version of what you think Mom would have said. You have to fill in the gaps like, “Oh, I wonder what made him sick, or what he’s responding to from her last letter.”

My brother and brother-in-law are both ex-Navy men as well. When we’ve talked about my dad mentioning something about the ship or protocols, my brother-in-law and brother will help translate. Later on in the letters, he talks about studying for his certifications. My niece was reading about this study and how my dad was so worried that he wasn’t going to pass. My dad was brilliant. He passed every test. But my niece was like, “I have to get to those parts of the letters.”

AA: She was enthralled with the story! Wow! It is so wonderful that you all can share this intimate collection of love letters. How did it first come into your possession?

I knew the letters existed but didn’t really know where they were and I hadn’t seen them. Since April, my mother had them hidden away. I moved her into my home because of COVID-19, and as her health declined, she really couldn’t speak anymore. Then she passed away, right at the end of April last year.

Photo provided by Rosemary Cassie

This photo of the happy couple was provided by Rosemary Cassie and is used with permission.

AA: They must have meant a lot to her to keep them kept close for so many years. Did she talk about them at all towards the end of her life?

About two weeks before she passed, she kept asking for them. She had a brain tumor, so she was fading fast. What seemed to really make her calmer is whenever the family came to visit, I would pull out the letters and they would read from them. What made me think of wanting to digitize them was everyone asking who will inherit the letters. I’m like, “Well, everybody should have the letters.” It was my daughter-in-law’s idea to find an archivist.

AA: How was the collection stored when it was in your mother’s possession, and what was your approach going forward?

They were in her dresser drawer. Literally in the plastic bags you get when you buy comforters and blankets. They were tied with bows, and they were somewhat in chronological order.

When I was talking with Mark [Anderson, Founding Principal of Anderson Archival] about the project and he was telling me his process, I said, “Well, they’re getting fragile. When you’re done with the letters, instead of folding them back up and putting them in the original envelopes and shipping them back, what do you have to preserve them?”

Want to learn more about storing collections safely? We outline some of the best strategies.

The team did some research and what seemed like the most logical solution was to put them in plastic preservation sleeves and preservation boxes. What’s really cool about that is that it’s a binder, so it’s just faster than trying to maneuver to the computer. It’s so nice because when the family gets together, I have them right there.

Digitized handwritten letter

The letter writer imagines his tour to be a pleasure cruise as he spends his days studying.

AA: Have you and your family gained any insights or interesting anecdotes from approaching these letters together?

Oh, my God, yes. It’s so funny. First of all, everyone’s said how my dad’s cursive was very nice. I mean, he’s writing on a ship in pencil, probably in a two-by-two-foot space, and still had beautiful handwriting. About half the people in my family under 30 don’t even know how to read cursive.

And then there’s phrases or terminology that the younger kids don’t even know… A letter mentioned dungarees somewhere, and so my niece asked, “What are dungarees?” Or there was another word that my mom used instead of a dresser, “bureau,” that the younger kids weren’t familiar with.

But I think what we noticed right away was how romantic they are, and how it continued, no matter how long they were married—it was sixty-two years before my dad passed. In addition to the Korean War-era letters, the collection also included two letters that were from the 70s, and one from the 90s. And you wouldn’t even know there was all that much time difference, because they were still in that same tone.

The letters just keep giving us the opportunity to connect. The ability to read them chronologically without the hassle of opening them and unfolding them, and just the fact that we can scale it digitally is the number one benefit.

AA: Is there anything else that you want to share about your collection or the process?

I will just say that clarity is bar none. It’s so nice. The digital versions are much easier to read than the hard copies because you can zoom in there. The end result is so much better than I thought I would get because I’m used to like scanning from my multipurpose printer/scanner. They accommodated for the varying size of each letter and left a border around it so that you didn’t have to worry about [the image being cut off].

I really appreciated when the scanning was done, as you were working to put it together in additional formats, [your team] was very willing to arrange it in a way that would make sense to us. Again, I can’t say enough nice things about how impressed I was with the service and the communication back and forth throughout the project. It was all very professional, and I really appreciate that type of process.

AA: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, Rosemary, and allowing us to work on this special collection. It was a pleasure.

That’ll be another topic for my family meeting. I can’t wait.

 

Whether they’re recorded in modern times or generations past, human emotions and connections will always stand the test of time. Do you have a family collection in need of digital preservation? Connect with us today!

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One of Anderson Archival's team members

Holding History in Our Hands

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Creating Life-Altering Memories

“I am honored to work for a company where I get to help our clients preserve historical documents,” says content specialist Marcia Spicer of her work at Anderson Archival. “Whether they are the private memories from someone who never imagined their words would survive through the generations or a public collection that can be shared with the whole world, by digitizing and helping to preserve history, we get to touch it, to experience it, and even be a small part of it.”

On the Anderson Archival blog, we try to showcase every aspect of digital preservation, from historical tales of preservation to interviews with clients and industry professionals. But we’ve never before shared the thoughts of the Anderson Archival team itself. Marcia Spicer sat down with us and answered some questions about her work digitizing historical documents.

AA: What experience do you bring to the Anderson Archival team?

MS: One of the most exciting things about our team is that we all come from different backgrounds and levels of experiences, but through training and continuing education, we’ve grown into this well-oiled, dedicated digitization machine.

Personally, I have an MA in English. I thought I would use it in writing, and while I do get to write for our blog, I definitely don’t spend the bulk of my time in an “English” mode. During college, my group of friends was a really fun mix of English majors and Historical Preservation majors. I always felt an affinity for them and understood that our areas of focus were cousins. We both worked in the intersection of past and future, helping to make the artifacts and words of the past powerful and accessible in the present. It was just recently that I made the connection. My education came full circle.

While my formal education didn’t have a lot to do with digitization, I did have a minor in Small Press Publications, looking at things like editing, binding, and publications. These factors all weigh in to digitization as well.

I’m incredibly grateful that Anderson Archival prioritizes continued education and training. Between learning from my teammates and keeping on top of the latest best practices, I’ve learned so much, and it thrills me to be able to put all that learning—from my English degree, historical preservation buddies, publication knowledge, and archival training—into practice for our clients.

AA: It sounds like this position was a one-in-a-million find for you.

MS: I honestly think a lot about how lucky I am to be here, to get to do what I do.

AA: Could you share a little more about what you do?

MS: On paper it is pretty straightforward. We take original documents, photos, and bound materials that our clients want to do something with, and we digitize them.

What does that mean?

There’s a careful review and notation of everything that comes in the door. If page 100 comes to us with half of the page ripped out, we record that. If there are little notes tucked between pages, we note that and follow up with the client to see if that’s part of what needs to be digitized or was just put there by accident. We take those documents and capture each surface using our V-cradle scanner or flatbed, and each step of the way there are eyes on the process to make sure that every part of every single page is captured completely, in focus, and accurate to the original.

We take pride in the high level of detail, care, and privacy we offer clients. Depending on what the client wants, we can tweak the light levels to make text more legible or can clean up the page to “erase” scratch marks or handwritten notes. We work with the client to ensure that the final product is going to work for what they need, but also to make sure that they have a true archival-standard copy as their master copy. Then comes a conversation about how this collection is going to be used by their audience, and whether they need us to build features like full-text search, a database, or a website from scratch.

At the end of the day, Anderson Archival is about providing solutions. I make those solutions happen. I get to preserve history through those solutions. It is a bonus—a big one—that through my work I also get to relive experiences that aren’t always recorded in books. I get to experience different viewpoints, so many pieces of the puzzle that makes up what America and the world is today.

AA: Every day offers a new challenge. Is that fair to say?

MS: A new challenge for sure, but also a new opportunity.

Not too long ago I had the chance to work with a diary from the Civil War. As I’m turning the pages of this tiny diary, making sure to treat the delicate pages gently, I’m thinking about the other people who have touched the pages. The family that brought it to us and the original author. I’m thinking about how the client for this project entrusted us—entrusted me—with this one-of-a-kind, prized possession, because they know that having that diary digitized will help it last longer, be easier to use, and be shared far easier than a single physical copy could ever be. As I turn the pages, I see when the author was feeling sadness, fear, joy, awe, confusion… Those words are from over a century ago, but the feelings he recorded are just as real today, just as universal. He might not have his name in the history books, but this day-to-day recording of his experience makes that history real.

A lot of the work we do is some degree of confidential, but when I notice a really impactful quote or startling piece of information, I rush to the team and we share a moment of awe together. I think about that moment when clients get the final product, and they too can pore over the pages to find details that they maybe couldn’t see before or couldn’t risk handling the pages to truly examine. They get to have those moments too.

AA: Thank you for taking some time to share your experience, Marcia. Would you share something you wish people knew about Anderson Archival and the work you do?

What I’ve come to understand is that even though these documents may be old, their importance hasn’t aged. Our clients, their families, and their organizations all still connect to them, because the history is relatable and real. The experiences documented are still applicable and can be learned from today.

Without digitization, a lot of documents, especially the rarest or the most fragile, would never be available for multiple people to experience. Knowing that I’m a part of making something totally unique and potentially life-altering accessible to others means the world to me, and it speaks to the core of what Anderson Archival is.

 

We’d love to be involved in the story of your collection, whether that is through digitizing materials, building online access, or sharing your own journey on our blog. Whether you’re interested in telling us about your process, or looking for solutions, drop us a line.

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Can the single piece of physical evidence survive to tell the story?

A Tale of Two Explorers

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The more items preserved from a historical period or event, the better our understanding of what happened, how people lived, and what was important at the time. But sometimes a single artifact or document can shed light on unknown or obscured history. Oftentimes these types of artifacts are hidden away in family collections or lost to the elements, but when found, their importance is incalculable. The evidence of two explorers showcase how important a single document can be to illuminate events that would otherwise remain a mystery.

Greenland’s Tragic Expedition

In 1906, Jørgen Brønlund was one of many explorers and scientists braving the hostile terrain of Greenland in order to map this unknown part of the Arctic. Although the mission to map Greenland was a success, Brønlund would never live to see it.

Brønlund’s team, consisting of him, expedition leader Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, and Niels Peter Høeg Hagen, set out along the coast of Greenland, but a miscalculation about the then-unexplored Danmark Fjord forced them to backtrack and waste precious time. Instead of returning to the expedition’s ship, Mylius-Erichsen believed his team could make it to their original goal of Navy Cliff before summer melted the ice. After enduring a grueling year-long journey, all three perished on the Greenland ice.

The last to die, Brønlund’s remains were found in a cave alone, still in possession of the team’s cartography notes and a diary, which recounted in his own words both the journey and his last days. While the maps helped the expedition’s main purpose, it is the diary that has proved invaluable. Listing dry facts may explain what happened, but to hear the journey in Brønlund’s own voice right up to his death gives life back to the man who wrote it. It paints him as a real person—not merely a historical footnote.

Died the 79 fjord under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reach this place under a waning moon, and could not go on, because of frostbite in the feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fjord in front of glacier (about 2-1/2 miles). Hagen died on November 15, Mylius some ten days later.”—Brønlund’s final diary entry, quoted in ArsTechinca

The Mystery on Mt. Everest

There’s an enduring question surrounding Mt. Everest that no one has been able to solve. Who was the first duo to reach the summit, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine or Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay? While Hillary and Tenzing are officially recorded as the first people to stand on the summit of Mt. Everest, the mystery of Mallory and Irvine remains.

In 1924, nearly thirty years before Hillary and Tenzing’s record journey, Mallory and Irvine made their own fateful attempt to reach the summit and never returned. Mallory had several times before attempted to conquer Mt. Everest, without success. On this last journey he was determined to make it, but did he?

Mallory and Irvine were last seen by their support climber, Noel Odell, while he rested at about eight thousand meters up the mountain. According to Odell, the sky around the summit cleared of clouds and he was able to see two black spots climbing and topping the Second Step, one of the most difficult obstacles and mere hours away from the summit. After that, the two climbers were lost from view.

Whether the two reached the summit after Odell saw them is still under speculation, but in 1999 the mystery was reignited when Mallory’s body was finally located. Though there was no proof on the body that Mallory reached the summit, the clues that were there point to the possibility. Among them were Mallory’s detailed plans on how he planned to reach the summit, including an inventory of supplies, and notes on the pressure in the pair’s five oxygen cylinders, one more than he was previously known to have.

Little more than notes and scraps, these writings shed new light on the Mallory expedition and change the probability of Mallory’s success. Many hope that finding Irvine’s body will shed more light on the truth. Until then, the mystery remains.

We are going to sail to the top this time and god with us, or stamp to the top with the wind in our teeth.”—George Mallory in a letter home, quoted in The Wire

Uncover Your Own Revelations

Not all revelations are as dramatic as these two explorers’, and many are found in more hospitable places than the Arctic and frozen mountain tops. A unique family collection may be the only evidence of events or people later generations never knew, such as letters sent during World War II that give new life to deceased family members. Organizational collections can also house artifacts and documents that no one outside of the organization knows about due to limited access.

Digitally preserving these historical materials is the only way to ensure the truth within will survive should the physical object be lost. Once digitized, the audience for a collection can be expanded worldwide.

It is often through improved access that these obscure sources and the revelations within are found. You may not realize the importance of the items in your collection, but someone else may find the only source material that illuminates the history they research—or even reshape it.

 

Do you know what historical gems are in your collection? Beyond damage-free scanning, Anderson Archival takes a detailed inventory of artifacts brought to us for digitization. Searching for a specific topic? Adding detailed metadata to each file makes intuitive discovery a breeze. Would you like to discuss your collection?

 

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A Cat’s Mark on History from The Hill

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What do you do when tragedy befalls a one-of-a-kind document?

Accidents are bound to happen, but it’s devastating when they happen to rare materials. Birth certificates and diplomas can be reissued, but unique, antique, or otherwise precious pieces of history don’t always have a simple—or successful—solution when the worst happens.

Kelienne “Kelli” M. Miriani-Ripple was faced with a calamitous situation in the fall of 2020 when an invaluable piece of family memorabilia was damaged in a cat-related incident.

For Kelli, remaining homebound due to the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to go through her numerous boxes of family memorabilia.

Among other treasures, Kelli discovered a framed proclamation from the Mayor of St. Louis that celebrated the anniversary and community involvement of Kelli ’s grandparents, Helen and Anthony Colombo. Pleased with what she had uncovered, Kelli leaned the document against the wall in her family room, indicating to her husband where she would like it hung in her new family museum.

Enter Tommy the cat. The framed document was in a prime location for Tommy to take notice, and no more than a minute had passed after Kelli set down the proclamation when Tommy was there, marking his territory. There wasn’t any way to clean such a foul liquid from the document, and Kelli certainly didn’t want to display her cat’s contribution on the walls.

“I felt so stupid,” Kelli told Anderson Archival.

Protect your historical documents from cats and more. Learn the best way to preserve your documents in storage.

Anthony Colombo and Helen Negro on their wedding day on January 7, 1940. Image provided by Kelli Miriani, and used with permission.

The document in question not only commemorated a milestone in her grandparents’ lives, but also provided a vital piece of her family’s history in St. Louis.

Kelli’s great-grandfather, Emilio Negro, journeyed to America in the early 1900s. He settled in St. Louis, Missouri, and began to build a life for himself. Due to the way Italians were treated at the time, he started a house-building business under an alias. Many of those houses remain in the family today. Emilio raised his family in the St. Louis neighborhood The Hill, which is steeped in the history of its Italian immigrants. Emilio and his wife Luisa’s daughter, Helen, was born in 1917, and she grew up to marry Anthony “Tony” Colombo, who was born in 1918.

Tony Colombo, like his father-in-law before him, was an integral part of the The Hill’s closely knit community. Around 1946, he returned from WWII and opened Colombo’s Tavern, which still stands on Manchester Road today.

Tony became very active in politics and was well-connected in St. Louis. Though he only had an eighth-grade education, Tony had a reputation in his community for treating everyone with respect, from politicians and police officers to the downtrodden.

Whatever you need, Tony will take care of you,” Kelli recites.

Helen and Anthony. Image provided by Kelli Miriani, and used with permission.

The Tavern offered many services: financial aid, check cashing, and more. If someone came in needing help, Tony would use his connections in the community to do whatever he could for them. Tony prided himself on taking care of his community and his family. “They called me ‘Crash’ because I was accident-prone,” Miriani recalls. “Grandpa was always there to finance repairs.”

Helen was also involved in community politics and worked for the St. Louis Municipal Courts system. The combined influence of Helen and Tony contributed to the legacies of many local politicians still active today.

Following the tradition of families on The Hill, the Colombo family always had four generations living close together. Being a beloved granddaughter of Tony and Helen, Kelli herself contributed to the larger community by helping with political work and babysitting during community events.

When Helen passed away, Kelli swooped in to rescue what items she could and rummaged through them to pull out items for display.

The original Proclamation, bearing Tommy the cat’s mark on history.

After Anderson Archival’s digital restoration.

 

The wedding proclamation wasn’t the only one-of-a-kind piece of family memorabilia found in these bins. Seeking to restore the cat-sodden proclamation allowed Kelli to consider fixing another document. A resolution regarding the Colombos’ anniversary in partnership with the damaged proclamation had a typo in Helen’s maiden name.

Kelli’s husband was the one who found Anderson Archival online. He’s an avid researcher who takes his time to read reviews and evaluate potential vendors in all aspects of his life, so Kelli had high hopes that something could be done to preserve her documents. “The worst that could happen would be that they say no.”

Always eager to accept a challenge, Anderson Archival said, “Let’s see what we can do.”

Though the proclamation was discolored, blurred, and permanently damaged, Anderson Archival was able to digitally reconstruct the text at the bottom of the document. Careful scanning of the oversized document allowed for a clear, perfectly editable image. Digitally restoring the document preserved the original in its cat-branded state but also provided a clean replica that Miriani could reprint and display for posterity.

What is digital document restoration? It may be the best solution to returning digital scans to their ideal or original condition.

The resolution document was another challenge, because the typos in the original required digital replacement of several letters that needed to match the spacing and coloring of the document around them. This typically isn’t the kind of undertaking most digital preservationists on their doorstep, because most preservation projects emphasize protecting the original content of a document. But since Kelli was intending to use this digitally-corrected document for personal display, she wanted the replica to have the correct information.

The walls of Kelli’s family room tell the stories of family members no longer alive, her own small family museum. This collection highlights the personal impact of her grandparents’ lives to both their family and community. The Colombo-Miriani museum will continue to grow as Kelli discovers new family artifacts, and now has two more beautifully restored replicas that honor Anthony and Helen Colombo.

The original Resolution, typo marring the family significance.

After Anderson Archival’s digital restoration.

Do you have family memorabilia or historical artifacts you’d like to display but are stained, waterlogged, or otherwise damaged? Digital restoration may be exactly what you need! Contact us today to see what we can do for your special item.

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Inheriting a Collection: An Interview with Cape Girardeau County Archive Center Director, Marybeth Niederkorn

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It’s one thing to take care of a collection that you’ve built or cared for from the beginning, but coming into a long-established collection can be overwhelming. Where do you even start assessing what could be thousands of documents spanning multiple topics? How do you determine what is top priority for preservation and digitization efforts and what needs to wait? How do you improve and expand the functionality of a collection that’s been in use for decades?

These are the kinds of questions Marybeth Niederkorn asked herself when she was hired as the new director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center. Located in Jackson, MO, the Archive Center opened in 2001 to serve as a secure and accessible storage center for county records. The climate-controlled repository is open to the public and county officials five days a week with full-time staff available to help search the estimated one million pages of documents dating back to the 1790s.

Anderson Archival recently sat down with Director Marybeth Niederkorn to discuss the challenges of coming into an established collection, what the collection offers, and what she plans to do to move the collection forward.

Anderson Archival: Can you give me a little background about yourself?

Marybeth Niederkorn: I come from a background in journalism and education, which gives me a lot of training in research and a big network [of contacts in the area]. Local history fascinates me. It always has. And now, I’m able to promote it full time while also working to preserve it, make it accessible, and just deepen the understanding and the reach.

AA: So you know the Archive Center from a user’s end, and have experience with the intricacies of this region.

MN: Right, and in this region, we are really blessed with a lot of extremely knowledgeable historians. We have a bunch of organizations that have not just directors but volunteers who are deeply informed about this region’s history and … who are able to help connect the dots for people who need to know more about either their family’s history or a business’s history or how this all fits into the overall story of how this part of the country was settled.

AA: What kind of records do you house and what function does the Archive Center serve?

MN: The Archive Center is primarily a county facility, so we house county records from the treasurer, from the collector, from the auditor, so we have things like probate records, personal property tax records, marriage licenses, county commission meeting minutes, and some school records. Some of the school records we have are from schools that are no longer incorporated, so they’re very important historically.

We also have the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society records here. There was a genealogist named Margaret Mates who did research on hundreds of families in the area, and she has collected information on birth and marriage records. It’s an extensive collection of binders of her work, and that’s extremely helpful when someone calls us and says, “Hey, I’m trying to figure out, my twice-great-grandfather was married three times and how does that family work?” We’re able to give them some insight usually using those records, and we can also usually pull up information on . . . maps of land ownership.

There’s a map [of the county] that we use a lot. It’s the 1901 map, and it shows who owned what and where, and we have that indexed so we can usually find some pretty good information. We can either work backwards from it using our tax records—ownership records—or, we can work forward.

And we assist patrons with research. We talk with genealogists from all over the world. We have a genealogist in Germany who has some family connection here, so he calls us sometimes. We work with people who are looking for records of all types. A pretty common one we get is someone calling in to find out when their divorce was finalized, because they are getting remarried or they need a driver’s license. It’s kind of eclectic. We never have the same day twice.

We never have the same day twice.”—Marybeth Niederkorn, Director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center

AA: What was it like coming into an established collection for the first time?

MN: A little overwhelming. From my time at the Southeast Missourian I knew about this facility… I had an idea of what I was getting into, but it has been a long process of wading into the collection so that I don’t drown. I’ve been leaning pretty heavily on our volunteers and on Lyle Johnston, our assistant archivist, who is a wealth of information and can put his hand on just about any document in the place when asked.

I have a wonderful staff and I am trying not to overwhelm myself. Fortunately, my predecessors, the previous directors of this facility, have been excellent stewards and custodians of this collection. I was able to step into something that was pretty well prepared for someone to take over and take it to the next level.

AA: What does the next level look like for this collection?

MN: We already have a gem of a facility. My hope is to raise the profile of this place and have more people understand what we have, what we are, and what we can do for them. We are a county facility. We’re supported by county tax dollars. I take that very seriously.

[The collection is] publicly accessible, and I would love for more of the public to know about us, and that we can do a lot of research [on their behalf] by phone or email.

We had a person this morning email us and ask what the history of a particular building in Cape Girardeau is. Our first questions back were, “What do you want to know specifically? Do you want to know chain of ownership? Do you want to know historical significance, because that’s a big question, but we’d love to help.”

We love a mystery, is what I like to tell people, because I think people hesitate to ask us to do research for them because they feel like it’s a big ask, but we love diving in and seeing what we can find for people. That is pretty much our favorite thing to do here.

The Archive Center holds much of Cape Girardeau County’s history

AA: What were some of the first things you had to assess?

MN: Lyle had been the de facto director for not quite a year before I came in because the previous director had been very ill and unfortunately passed away this spring. So, I’m still in the discovery phase; I’m still trying to assess where we are.

The first thing that we talked about on day one when Lyle took me on a tour of the facility was that we need to increase our shelving capacity, because there are some places where boxes are stacked two or three tall on a shelf. That’s not ideal, because paper is really heavy, and these boxes are not really designed for that level of structural integrity. That’s our biggest focus right now. As soon as we get that secured, we can start looking at what kinds of records we can digitize in order to support our physical collection.

We get that question a lot, “Why isn’t your whole collection online?” Oh, boy.

It would be really nice, but we have other priorities at the moment. We would love to have things online, but there’s also some sensitive information. We house divorce records—divorce records have social security numbers and children’s names and that kind of thing.

AA: In other words, with digitization comes cyber security.

MN: Exactly. And that would be something we would need to outsource. What I tell people is, if we had 500 volunteers working 50 hours a week, it might only take us 60 years to get most of our collection online, you know, so it’s a lot. And we don’t even have 50 volunteers.

AA: How do you prioritize changes and improvements for the archive?

MN: It’s a matter of figuring out what is going to be the most costly. As far as money and time, I’m working on grants to help secure that funding. I am working on what I consider the biggest things first, and also maintaining our document stabilization efforts.

I would really like for an outside observer to come in and assess what we’re doing right and let us know what we can improve, because I think having an outside perspective would be very helpful.

I don’t want to just go back there willy-nilly and say, “Well, I know we need shelves but I don’t know what else we need,” and just kind of throw darts at a list of stuff, if you know what I mean. Having a plan is definitely better.

AA: What other plans do you have for the archive?

MN: I’m hoping to raise the profile and public awareness of what we have, and hopefully work towards digitization as a backup to our existing hard copies. I have been talking with a lot of the other facility directors and organizations in the area. I’m hoping to work as closely as I can with, for instance, the State Historical Society of Missouri, with the Genealogical Society of Cape Girardeau County, with the Cape Girardeau County History Center, which is about a block and a half away from us, and with Southeast Missouri State University, in Cape Girardeau.

They focus more on collections that have physical objects, so their mission is a bit different from what we do, but it’s a great opportunity for us all to support each other and work together. We all have different resources and different strengths, and if a person calls us, and they need some information that I happen to know the State Historical Society is working through at this very moment, then I can direct them that way and vice versa.

My hope is to work more closely with other organizations, and generally be more visible and more accessible to people so that we can be of the most benefit possible.

People hesitate to ask us to do research for them because they feel like it’s a big ask, but we love diving in and seeing what we can find for people. That is pretty much our favorite thing to do here.”—Marybeth Niederkorn, Director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center

AA: What would you suggest someone coming into an established collection should do?

MN: Don’t try to do everything at once. Don’t try to learn everything at once, it’s going to take some time. Knowing the physical location of things is important, and knowing the condition of the records in your collection is important.

Knowing who your resource people are is important. For instance, we have a few key people we can call if we have a question. We got a question last week where someone was looking for the name of a specific funeral home that had operated in the 1940s and 50s. We looked in our phone directories; we looked in obituaries from that time period. We looked a few places and could not come up with it.

It’s very possible that a funeral home in the 1940s /1950s didn’t have a phone number, so it wasn’t in a phone directory. But I was able to call a couple of people, and one of them came right back with, “Oh, this was the name of it. All of their records went to a specific place whenever they closed down.” So, knowing your key people to call to help fill in the gaps and put information together is very important.

Knowing the state the collection is in and understanding what the mission of your facility is—know your goals and understand how to get there is essential. And that’s probably going to take a lot of talking to people and sitting with the collection and getting a good physical sense for it.

 

Anderson Archival is grateful to Marybeth Niederkorn for her time and participation in this interview. The Cape Girardeau Archive Center can be reached at archive@capecounty.us. For many researchers and archivists, knowing the resources that are publicly available, such as the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, is the first step in unraveling the ever-growing story of history.

If you’re coming into a collection or have been curating one from scratch and it needs digitization, the experts at Anderson Archival are ready to help you move your collection forward.

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Antique Stopwatch

2020: The Time Capsule

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For many different reasons, 2020 was a year to remember. The world handled a global pandemic, upheaval of normal life, and social unrest. How do we preserve the memories of this unique year and the lessons learned for generations to come?

Time capsules may seem like childhood fancy or relics of the past, especially when social media has become an essential part of documenting our personal and professional lives. Many see social media as a scrapbook of sorts, but sometimes these platforms fail to meet that need. And while Facebook and Instagram may seem ubiquitous now, there may come a time when neither is available to serve as documentation of the past.

Even if you like to post every thought and photograph online, when a year as revolutionary as 2020 comes along, it may inspire you to document this chapter of your life in a more tangible way.

Some folks found themselves with the time and opportunity to travel to their childhood home or visit extended family members to spend lockdown with. Others had to manage the belongings and collections from loved ones lost. Rummaging through old family heirlooms may have uncovered time capsules from other eras, like the box of letters your grandparents wrote to one another or the storage locker of collectibles you knew your dad kept but had no idea of the scope and detail of the history behind it. Every collection serves as a time capsule in its own way, offering a snapshot of a particular moment in time.

Professional archivists and amateur historians alike often share the mentality of collecting everything now so that the value of that collection can be fully realized in the future. In ten, twenty, or one hundred years, you may be shocked by what you saved that holds resonance.

This printout has some great starting points if you’re not sure what’s worth recording, or follow NPR’s Life Kit podcast’s advice and make a throwback ‘zine about your 2020 experience!

Been taking lots of photos of your pet’s daytime activities that you haven’t typically been home for? Try creating a digital scrapbook of cat snapshots or a website gallery you can share with friends. Photos that capture the feelings of isolation, candid masked selfies, the heat of a local protest, or tranquil pockets of nature can all prove valuable to future historians (or future friends and family) as a record of 2020. A printed photo book that can be flipped through might make a good gift for a family member who missed out on social activities. Something tangible might make a nice change as memory of a year that was spent so much online.

Even the small things hold meaning and memory. Remote work became a staple of many workplaces in 2020 out of necessity when the world seemed to shut down overnight. This was a major change for a lot of workers, and it came with its own set of mental, technical, and security challenges. For those of us lucky enough to work from home since the lockdowns began in early 2020, it might be fun to document some of the experiences you’ve undergone with that change. Ask to take screenshots of your office Zoom lunches to document the ups and downs of connecting with your coworkers in a new way.

Regardless of how you choose to document this year, here are some tips to make sure your 2020 capsule will last:

Back up all digital media. Two backup methods are always better than one! On top of keeping a physical copy on a flash drive or external hard drive, saving your time capsule to the cloud not only assures that you won’t lose the images and documents if the physical method fails, but it also makes it easier to share with friends, family, or on social media. Don’t forget to save your materials in file formats that will stand the test of time.

Organize as you go. Not only is doing this best preservation practice, but it will also make viewing and using your time capsule in the future much easier. If you decide to add metadata to your collection in the future for improved searchability, labeled and sorted materials will make that step all the easier. There’s nothing more frustrating to the personal historian than opening up a folder or album years later and finding unlabeled, unfamiliar faces. Documentation will be a key part of enjoying your collection and passing it on.

Use appropriate storage materials. All physical items in your time capsule should be stored in acid-free, archival-grade boxes, envelopes, or storage containers. The storage environment is equally important. Make sure your time capsule is safe by keeping it out of humid or variable temperature environments like attics or basements. As fun as it might be to bury your capsule, unless the vessel is secure and meant for that environmental stress, you might be sending your valuable memories to decay.

And one last tip: Consult the preservation experts! Anderson Archival is always available to field any preservation questions you may have about documenting one of the most unforgettable years of this century. And if part of your year involved introduction to an existing collection that hasn’t been digitally preserved, the time is right to read about the ways to keep it available for the future.

As we kick off 2021, Anderson Archival is here for your digital preservation needs. Contact us at any time: we can’t wait to hear about your pieces of history.

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