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Archive for category: Preservation

Anderson Technologies

How It All Began: The Start of Anderson Archival

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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.

Karpeles Manuscript Library2019, Anderson Archival

Firefighters Save Historic Documents Amid Museum Fire

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A St. Louis museum was compromised by a fire this week, but thankfully most of the collection had been digitized!

Late Tuesday night, March 26, 2019, a four-alarm fire broke out in the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in South St. Louis. As a St. Louis-based company dedicated to digitally archiving historic documents, this almost-tragedy hit close to home, and we waited for news of how much of this unique collection was left.

The 107-year-old Greek Revival building, originally the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, housed a portion of David Karpeles’ manuscript collection, the largest private manuscript collection in the world, as well as an exhibit by the St. Louis Media Foundation. Some of the items on display included France’s approval of the Louisiana Purchase, Columbus’ handwritten letter describing the coasts of America, documents about revolutionary Che Guevara, and a number of historic St. Louis-related documents. The loss of any one of these items would be a devastating blow to both world and local history.

Yet, thanks to the hard work of nearly eighty firefighters, none of the documents were lost to the fire. The exhibits were set up on the first floor, and the fire began in the back of the second and higher floors. This not only allowed firefighters to try to contain the blaze away from the collection, but gave them time to remove as much as they could from the path of destruction.

While some items did receive water damage from putting out the fire, it’s amazing that nothing was lost in the two-hour blaze. If the worst had occurred, though, not all would have been lost. Part of the collection had already been digitized, so even if the original document was destroyed in the fire, its contents and the meaning behind it would have been preserved through digital archiving. These backups were appropriately stored offsite, so were completely safe from the hazard.

Here at Anderson Archival, we’re happy that both the physical and digital copies of these documents are still here, but this serves to remind us of the importance of digitizing historical collections for both their short- and long-term preservation. We hope that Karpeles decides to reopen the library in St. Louis, and continue to share this amazing manuscript collection in our hometown.

blockchain

More Than Bitcoin: Taking Blockchain Technology to Preservation

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What do Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have to do with archiving? The technology cryptocurrencies are built on – the blockchain – is drawing attention from those who seek to innovate within all industries, including archival.

This is especially relevant for the future of the archival community, as blockchain holds a potential solution to problems of impermanence and authorship. Many institutions, such as the UK government’s National Archives and Civil newsrooms, are considering and advocating the merits of blockchain-based repositories. While these proposed repositories do not yet exist, in theory they could ensure continued, unalterable preservation through embedding full text or original image scans into the fabric of the blockchain.

As purveyors of archival collections know, there are potential problems that can plague digital and physical archives. Blockchain technology provides a theoretical answer for two of those problems: integrity of authorship and permanence.

What is the Blockchain?

The simplest explanation is that blockchain allows for the average person to trust the authenticity of the digital world.

The blockchain is a collection of transactions. “Each new block references every block before it—so changing one block corrupts the whole chain,” says Blockchain for Grandma. Powerful computers perform randomized math to build the blockchain, and each block in the chain is permanent, immutable, and static.

In the case of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency on the blockchain, a transfer means another entry on the chain, which keeps a record of its creation and every transfer in its history. The massive network maintains its own integrity, confirming and double-checking every creation, or transfer.


A short blockchain explanation from Real Vision. “Each new block that is written contains something called a cryptographic hash, a small mathematical fingerprint of the blocks that came before it in the chain, making it extremely difficult to tamper with the data that resides inside the blocks.”

Blockchain embeds authentication into the document itself, and protects against tampering and modification. In essence, this works similarly to file-sharing services like DropBox or OneDrive, where local copies synchronize changes across all those with access.

Permanent digital records offer an enticing solution, especially in a world where records may easily be accidentally or maliciously deleted.

Integrity and Permanence Built into the Blockchain

Consider this scenario: A student writing a paper on Chaucer cites what is stated to be the original text reprinted in a textbook. Another student is able to present another instance of the so-called original text in an anthology, but that excerpt has changes. Obsessing over the disparity, the students track down other versions of that same “original text” to compare them. They discover that in one early printing, a comma was added and the spelling of a word modernized. Some textbooks reprinted the text prior to this printing, and some used the modern printing – all claiming to contain the original text.

Had this scenario unfolded on the blockchain, clear record would exist of the creation, editions inserting changes, and where copies originated. However, in the physical world, it is often unclear just where words have come from.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, when conducting research, multiple sources should be used to confirm facts. Whenever possible, it recommends going back to the original source. How do you know you have an original? Aside from consulting an expert, signals of authenticity in the real world include watermarks, signatures, and embossed seals. This recommendation is intended to circumvent the type of error-introduction shown above. But when this vigorous research is not conducted, how much print and research is then tainted by incorrect publication of facts or text?

When a digital library offers original pages with searchable text, the integrity of that text is placed implicitly in the hands of the archivist.

Many times, historical documents only exist physically as single-copies that are inaccessible to researchers. Digital scans can easily introduce errors or inaccurate information if an archivist’s agenda strays from true preservation. Ultimately, there is very little beyond trust that guarantees a digital library is a valid source, displaying the original.

But when dealing with important topics, trust and integrity might not feel like enough. Blockchain-like records or blockchain itself could provide a solution.

Case Studies

Until now, blockchain has only been practical for ultra-simple archiving processes, such as embedding text into a cryptocurrency transaction. The technology and means for widespread use in digital archives simply doesn’t exist. However, that may soon change.

ARCHANGEL

In a strictly archival sense, the UK National Archives is testing how blockchain might create a way to verify the accuracy of archived documents through a project called ARCHANGEL. The project is intended to directly combat the problem of digital storage becoming obsolete and inaccessible, and is currently in development stages.

Civil

Focusing more on the journalistic side, Civil newsrooms propose utilizing blockchain technology in two ways. The first ensures that published content in approved newsrooms is permanent and maintains a permanent link to authors and facts. The second uses CVL token transactions, owned and transferred by members of the Civil community, to indicate which newsrooms are trustworthy and eligible to remain on the Civil platform. The biggest barrier to entry with Civil and CVL is the learning curve. If the public doesn’t understand the process of utilizing blockchain in journalism and digital archives, the worth of that technology drops, and a failed first launch attempt has proven that.

Because blockchain has such a steep barrier to understanding and entry, it isn’t likely to take the world by storm any time soon. And because one of the purposes of creating digital archives is access, blockchain isn’t a feasible solution yet.

While blockchain may be the solution for the future, Anderson Archival understands and provides the current methods and standards of preservation. However, we do explore myriad methods of keeping data and originals safe from deterioration. If you’d like to explore the options that future technology could hold for the integrity and preservation of your collection, contact us today at 314.259.1900 or info@andersonarchival.com!

Casanova Confidential: Harding’s Letters and the Ethics of Preservation

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How do we balance our responsibility to accurately record history and our dedication to preserving it ethically?

Experienced archivists know how to separate their personal feelings from the materials they set out to preserve. They aren’t always tasked with endorsing the material, but simply preserving it. Dedicated archivists feel obligated to document the past, regardless of their opinions about the material.

The Society for American Archivists (SAA) first established an official code of ethics in 1980. It emphasizes both the need to make collections accessible to its audience and limits that audience in ways that protect “the donors, individuals, groups, and institutions whose public and private lives and activities are recorded in their holdings.”

In order to examine the role of ethics in digital preservation, consider an interesting case study from SAA’s research.

Controversial Correspondence

President Warren G. Harding first served in the US senate from 1915-1921, and then in the Oval Office from 1921-1923. Before his time in politics, he owned and operated a local daily newspaper, The Marion Star, with his wife Florence. He eventually became an active and well-known Republican due to his influence in local media, and his air of refinement and confidence led to his rise to national leadership.

The illusion of success didn’t last long into his presidency, however. Harding built his political platform on restructuring the government after the havoc of WWI, and this national inertia left a door open for corporations to corrupt the government from the inside out. Under-the-table deals like the Teapot Dome Scandal happened behind Harding’s back. His term as president was cut short when he passed away in 1923 before he could witness the extent of his cabinet’s infractions.

Our twenty-ninth president was also quite the Lothario, as White House rumors suggest. Only some of the transgressions during Harding’s short presidential term have been proven, but an affair before his time as president serves as the cherry on top of a less-than-stellar reputation. Before his days in the US senate, Harding befriended an acquaintance of Florence’s named Mrs. Carrie Fulton Phillips, and they began an affair that would last the better part of fifteen years. A closer analysis of Harding’s letters to Phillips reveals the explicit nature of their relationship, as well as hints that Phillips may have been a German spy, though those rumors are yet unfounded.

Clandestine Preservation

Nearly forty years later, an archivist named Ken Duckett became the curator of manuscripts for the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) from 1959 to 1965. The Harding family was fiercely opposed to any facts coming to light that might affect the former president’s reputation, which complicated negotiations with the Harding Memorial Association’s (HMA) materials. The HMA was carefully filtering the materials and removing anything that painted Harding in a negative light.

After Phillips’ death in 1960, Duckett managed to procure a collection of 240 letters and other correspondence between Harding and Phillips. When the box full of letters came into his possession, Duckett protected them in a safe deposit box until the Harding family agreed to hand over their historical materials. But still he worried about their safety and the validity of the historical record. For this reason, he made the controversial decision to secretly create microfilm copies of the letters and hide the originals in an OHS vault. Had the HMA known about these letters and their subsequent copies they would have immediately been destroyed, even though the love-letter-less collection they eventually presented to the OHS left significant gaps in Harding’s political legacy.

“On July 22, 1964, he wrote to Oliver Jensen of American Heritage ‘I have heard the words “burn, destroy and suppress” so many times since I acquired the papers, that I am determined that extraordinary precautions must be taken to insure their preservation and use by historians.’ Included with the letter was a copy of the microfilm sent for safekeeping. By taking this action Duckett was fully aware that he was placing his job at risk.”

After the release of a revealing Harding biography, a law suit from Harding’s family, and the resulting media circus surrounding the letter scandal, Duckett was forced to surrender all four known copies of the microfilmed letters—but secretly kept one copy for himself. This guaranteed that Harding’s marks on American history could never be erased, even if those marks were less than dignified.

The Harding family then donated the letters to the Library of Congress in 1972 after being assured they would be kept private until fifty years from the date the case was officially closed. The Library of Congress opened the letters to the public in 2014, mere days after Duckett’s death at age 90.

What Moderates The Test of Time?

Duckett’s choices raise some important questions about the ethics of documenting history. How does one determine what should be preserved? In a perfect world, all material with cultural significance would be around forever for future generations to learn from and enjoy. The act of preserving any material implies that it has inherent value—otherwise, why bother preserving it at all? But should sensitivity or, in this case, public image, override value?

At Anderson Archival, we respect the preferences of our clientele, and within those preferences we maintain utmost accuracy, confidentiality, and precision in preservation. Importantly, the SAA doesn’t draw clear lines to define accessibility and restriction for every collection because every collection is different. The job of each archivist is to preserve with these ideas in mind, and the preservation of the Harding letters serves as an exercise in ‘what would you do.’

Whether Duckett is a hero or an outlaw is up to each reader to determine. Striking a balance between accessibility and restriction is what Anderson Archival strives to do with every collection we work on. In fact, the majority of our projects thus far have been private, and kept confidential. At what lengths should archivists go to preserve history? We leave that decision up to you.

Do you have a collection that needs to be digitized, even if it’s only for your eyes? Need help determining the scope of its audience? Contact Anderson Archival today for a free consultation, or call us now at 314.259.1900.

have you found a treasure? here are the next steps for preservation

Treasure or Trash?

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Those of us who’ve seen Antiques Roadshow a few times have probably reflected on the once-thought-worthless item that ends up being worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. How can someone not know what they have is priceless? And on the other hand, how can that dusty old artifact be worth anything? Sometimes those antiques (and national treasures) have been found in the most bizarre places such as Goodwill and attics of old homes.

Time seems to have a curious effect on historical items. It seems that, as times change, different value is placed on seemingly valueless antiques. For instance, a family had a 1820s copy of The Declaration of Independence, and originally had it framed and displayed in their home. However, as the years went by, it was eventually considered worthless and stored, in its broken frame, in a closet. In 2014, it was found by a relative who realized its significance.

This story could happen to anyone. Some of these items end up being national treasures, and others irreplaceable family history. So, here are a few ways to determine whether your old junk is worth preserving.

Research

You can do some simple research on your own to determine whether your object is worth paying an appraisal fee. The Smithsonian says that university or area libraries, state and local historical societies or museums, and state extension services should be able to help you. If you are dealing with a document of questionable origin, see if you can find this document at any or all of these local historical libraries. Likely as not, there will be copies out there, unless it is a private letter. If it looks like the document came from the era it says it does, and you have reason to believe it’s authentic, take it in for an appraisal.

Appraisal

If you want to skip doing your own research or your document seems like it could be a true historical document, you should get it appraised as quickly as possible for insurance reasons. An appraisal should tell you not only what the document might be worth, but also information about its age, condition, and historical significance. Finding out the history of your document might be difficult to do on your own, but appraisers will be able to put you on the right track for further research.

Restoration, Preservation, or Marketing

What next? You need to decide what you want to do with your discovery. Are you going to keep it or sell it? Is the document in good shape or is it crumbling and quickly becoming illegible? Restoration services are available, but no matter what you do, we recommend getting it digitally preserved as well.

If you’re wanting to sell your document, your appraiser should be able to help you find a good outlet, whether a library, museum, or private buyer. They should also be able to recommend you to a reputable company that can restore your document if you desire.

If you want to keep your document, whether it needs restoration or not, digital preservation is essential. The government suggests specific guidelines for digitizing documents on their FADGI (Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) website. If these seem daunting to you, consider outsourcing for quality digitization services.

Digital Preservation

Digital preservation is important for a number of reasons. For instance, if a disaster befalls the original, that’s not the end of its story. You might lose the original historical piece, but at least you’ll have a backup saved for posterity to read and study. Aside from preserving your document in case of a disaster, digital preservation can make your research much more accurate and less time consuming if metadata is infused into the digital copies.

Your archivists can optically recognize (OCR) your document, making it readable to the computer so you can search it for keywords using database software like Adobe Reader. If metadata is added, you’ll be able to organize your documents in a digital library. What’s more, you will be able to share your document with others electronically and use technology to zoom in on the document while you study it without risking its damage.

Anderson Archival takes document preservation seriously. Our team of dedicated archivists are trained in the latest technology to preserve your documents digitally. So next time you shop at Goodwill and realize you’re looking at a 244-year-old-newspaper, you’ll know just what to do with it!

Are you ready to preserve your historical documents? Call Anderson Archival at 314.259.1900 or email us at info@andersonarchival.com, and a member of our team will be happy to answer your questions.

Search Results: 0 – The Unseen Cost of Inaccurate Data and Sub-Par Solutions

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Anderson Archival is pleased to have presented at Digital Preservation 2018 (#digipres18) in Las Vegas in October! The conference, with a theme on the future of digital preservation was hosted by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) and the Digital Library Foundation (DLF).

At the conference we highlighted what archivists should consider when creating or updating a digital collection, when not to choose economy over quality, and the various ways in which a digital collection can fail to be a useful research tool as a result of substandard work.

We embraced attendance at Digital Preservation 2018 as an opportunity to take part in the national discussion of preservation quality and access, and we would like to share with you what we presented at the conference.

Minute Madness

Anderson Archival shared a short one-minute presentation on the hidden cost of incorrect data.

Our Minute Madness presentation, “Search Results: 0 – The Unseen Cost of Inaccurate Data and Sub-Par Solutions” illustrated our experience in providing preservation solutions for a client who had previously invested in what they ultimately realized were poor solutions that offered only inaccurate, incomplete data.

For a collection that is used for scholarly research within their organization, this was a problem.

This group considered their collection preserved, but after a careful audit of their digital materials, we discovered that not only were chunks of original information missing entirely, the scans that were complete provided such messy OCR that search results woefully underrepresented the actual contents of the collection.

Search Results

What was the true cost of using this cheaper digitization solution for ten years? It’s impossible to calculate! Imagine the hours lost to inefficient search, and the research and publications that are now known to have drawn from fragmented data.

For instance, see what happens if OCR software reads this famous quote from Winston Churchill:

 

If the OCR mistakes the g and h and it goes unchecked, we end up with this in the collection:

If you searched for the famous portion of this Churchill quote “go to hell,” this document would never show up in your search results. Now imagine this hundreds of times over throughout your collection – many collections being tens of thousands of pages, or larger.

Inaccurate OCR data provides limited search results, and the lack of good search technology will give you an infinite number of useless results. These are both complicated by poor metadata tagging.

So what happens when a digital collection is preserved with inaccurate data and sub-par solutions? The voices of history don’t resonate when users access a poor software solution with inaccurate search results, and your collection won’t be used to its greatest potential.

The methodology you employ can mitigate these problems.

For the most accurate data, establishing a multi-step system for scanning, image cleanup, OCR and quality assurance is critical. 

You also need detailed tagging to support your data architecture and the right search technology tuned to your data set.

The Executive Director for the project mentioned above was horrified to learn that nearly a decade of their research was not complete.

How do you feel about your collection? Is quality important to you?

With a digitization provider like Anderson Archival, every step of the archival process is performed and checked by members of our expert team.

It’s time to gain confidence in your data and your search results! Check out our poster from Digital Preservation 2018 and call us today at 314.259.1900.

Protecting History with DLME

Protecting and Preserving History in Uncertain Times

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What is the duty of a library or museum? Take a moment to come up with some answers. Did you say…

  • To preserve knowledge?
  • To protect the history and cultures of past peoples?
  • To share that knowledge and history with the public?
  • To help people learn about the world around them?

You probably didn’t answer to make looting of antiquities unprofitable or to catch criminals selling black market artifacts. But that’s just what the founding organizations of the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) envisioned in the wake of physical, cultural, and political conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Soon, their vision will be a reality.

What is the DLME?

Founded in 2016 by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Digital Library Federation (DLF), and the Antiquities Coalition, the DLME intends to bring together existing Middle Eastern digital libraries from institutions and private collections around the world into a single searchable platform. The DLME will include all types of cultural heritage materials, extensively photographed, catalogued, and searchable in multiple languages.

Through this free-to-use online platform, the DLME intends to serve the “partners and peoples across the Middle East and North Africa—to help reveal, share, honor, and protect collections of cultural materials and the living and historical cultures they represent.” This platform offers scholars and researchers ease of use and includes images, metadata, location, and provenance when available for all items listed.

However, they want to be far more than a resource for students and scholars. Wars, both civil and foreign, have decimated the MENA region. Black market antiquities trading is a consistent source of income for terrorist organizations and warring states. The DLME will provide a large-scale database of known artifacts—documented and digitized—that customs officials, law enforcement agencies, and art dealers can use to determine if an item was stolen or looted from a conflict area. This not only helps to return objects to their rightful places, but also stops terrorist groups from funding their activities.

The Antiquities Coalition created this infographic to show just how digital databases help mitigate looting and the illegal antiquities trade. The DLME intends to bring countless databases together, making searching for the history or authenticity of an item far easier.

Antiques Coalition Combat Looting Infographic

Why Do We Need to Digitally Safeguard History?

In the past 20 years alone, countless artifacts, manuscripts, and historical sites located in conflict zones have been lost. In 2003, while U.S. troops entered Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Baghdad’s Iraq National Museum was looted of nearly 15,000 items, including “ritual vessels, heads from sculptures, amulets, Assyrian ivories, and more than 5,000 cylinder seals.” The looting lasted 36 hours before U.S. troops finally secured the site.

The loss could have been much worse. Many of the most valuable items were moved to a secret storage area known only to five people to safeguard them from looters, and a trove of gold, jewelry, and precious stones had been moved decades before to the Central Bank’s vaults for safekeeping.

Recovering these items was further complicated by the lack of computerized documentation or photographic evidence. The Iraq National Museum had only begun the process of cataloguing its massive inventory into a single digital database when the looting occurred, and since it was a repository for artifacts from recent excavations, many items lacked even hand-written documentation. Thanks to an amnesty program, many of the items were returned voluntarily, and others were found in raids or reported by customs officials and art dealers. But despite all the progress, more than 8,000 items from the Middle East’s earliest historical sites are still missing.

More recently, the war against the Islamic State (IS), or ISIS/ISIL, resulted in the mass destruction of two major UNESCO World Heritage sites, the cites of Nimrud and Hatra. After capturing the cities, IS forces proceeded to bulldoze and otherwise destroy as much of the cities as they could. This was done not merely to remove what they considered heretical idols, but to cover up their extensive looting of antiquities to be sold on the black market.

During a 2015 raid on IS commander Abu Sayyaf in Syria, numerous Iraqi relics were found ready to be sold. Further evidence showed that IS had profited millions of dollars not only from the antiquities trade, but from taxing those pillaging excavation sites. Just how much was lost to looters and the wanton destruction that followed is still being discovered.

If a database like the DLME existed during these times, officials and law enforcement agencies would have had access to accurate documentation of catalogued artifacts to catch looters trying to smuggle out the stolen pieces. Also, museums and governments would be able to confirm ownership on a contested artifact that managed to enter the legitimate art trade. Most importantly, future generations would have a full record of what was lost, even if it couldn’t be recovered.

The DLME’s Value to Research

While the DLME does want to combat the illegal trade of antiquities from the Middle East, its core principal is one of access, research, and outreach to the community about the culture and history of the MENA region. It has already partnered with the Qatar National Library and the Stanford Libraries, as well as other museums and libraries around the world, for inclusion in the DLME’s searchable platform.

The DLME’s prototype is already in use by scholars, allowing for discoveries that would have remained unknown if not for the federation of so many various source institutions. Through the DLME prototype, Jacco Dieleman, an Egyptologist based in Washington, D.C., located two papyri in the University of Pennsylvania’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, one of which had never been published. Thanks to the DLME, this piece of history could now be included in Egyptology research.

As more databases are added to the DLME, the qualitative value of its results will substantially improve the cultural conversations and research about the MENA region.

When Can You Use It?

You may have noticed above that the DLME is currently a prototype, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it. The DLME is able to reference more than 130,000 records from various institutions around the world. These can be searched in a variety of ways, such as by language, location, country of origin, era, type of item, creator, and more. And it won’t be a prototype forever.

In April, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the CLIR $1.12 million to complete the DLME. When finished, the DLME will be accessible online and through any mobile device. The final version is expected to launch in 2020, though the CLIR and DLF intend it to grow and adapt with changing technologies.

 

In “The Critical Role of Digital Libraries,” Peter Herdrich of the DLME and Antiquities Coalition stated, “Creating inventories, documenting collections, and making digital records accessible are considered best practice for heritage collections and are widely used around the world.” He goes on to say that making the DLME publicly available “help[s] to safeguard a fundamentally important expression of our humanity.”

Ultimately, that is the goal of most digital collections: to share knowledge in order to protect and preserve a part of our past or present civilizations. Through digitization and thorough documentation, we are better able now than ever before to ensure the survival of culturally or historically significant materials, even if the artifacts themselves become lost or destroyed.

If you’d like to start a digital collection of your own, or need a search platform to make an existing digital collection more accessible, contact Anderson Archival by phone at 314.259.1900 or by email at info@andersonarchival.com.

Pile of damaged books

5 Crucial Reasons to Digitize Your Historical Documents (and 5 Reasons You’ll Never Regret It)

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Imagine you are a retired scientist who lives down the street from a library that houses valued historical documents. You’ve always had a fascination with maps of streams, lakes, and tides, and the ecology around them, and since your retirement, you enjoy more time sifting through the historical research and analytics.

One day, you see a dumpster outside, cardboard boxes littering the walkway in front of the building. Pedestrians are riffling and collecting items from them. But you don’t think anything of it because all libraries renovate, don’t they?

And then, not long after, the library is closed.

This is what happened to Canada’s Libraries of Fisheries and Oceans. When? Not 100 years ago and not 50.  Between 2012 and 2015, the government cut funding from these libraries, causing 7 out of 11 to close and recklessly disperse their documents. Scientists refer to this incident as a modern-day Library of Alexandria because so much knowledge, information, and research was lost.

The Tyee journalist Andrew Nikiforuk says, “Established in 1973, when foreign governments hailed Canada as a world leader in freshwater science and protection, the library housed tens of thousands of reports, maps, charts and books, including material dating back to the 1880s.” A treasury of information!

So what happened to those historical documents?

While many books and papers were relocated to a federal library in British Columbia, Gloria Galloway of The Globe and Mail says that books and research documents were given away, sold, or discarded into dumpsters. The only documents kept were “remains pertinent to the department’s mandate.” Much of the literature was not widely published material nor was all of it digitized. Some of it was, but the government refuses to answer how much.

In fact, CBC’s Max Paris says, “Critics said it was to get rid of environmental elements of the act that hindered the government’s plans for resource development and export.” Some allege that the retention of select data alludes to a political agenda that might otherwise be hindered by complete and long-documented research.

What was lost? The science behind water conservation is incredibly important because of how it affects habitats all over the globe. Canada contains 20% of the world’s freshwater, and research pertinent to the conservation around freshwater and saltwater and whole-lake experiments is now lost. This endangers not only Canada’s natural resources, but the world’s since the research was used to conserve and safely maintain global water sources.

The Time to Digitize Is Now

There is no “safe place” for indefinitely preserving historical documents from decay or other damage. However, you can make sure information kept in those documents will remain available for generations to come by digitizing them.

Consider these five crucial reasons to digitize your historical documents now:

  1. You never know when tragedy may strike in the form of a natural disaster. Files, folders, and cardboard boxes stacked in the attic or shelves in a warehouse is not safe storage. Even a historical library or society is at risk. Floods, fires, or vandalism can happen at any moment.
  2. Human negligence happens. Insurance will compensate you, but it cannot recover lost or accidentally destroyed artifacts.
  3. How many times have governments destroyed books to further their agendas, instill fear in citizens, gain control of education or other jurisdictional departments, or rewrite history? It can even be as mundane as lack of funding. The Libraries of Fisheries and Oceans is not the only modern book burning. History shows that it regularly happens on almost every continent, in almost every country around the world.
  4. Once lost, those historical items are gone forever. In many cases, there are no replacements or backups. Who could replace the journal of George Washington if it was lost? Future generations would never have this personal insight into our first president. How can we learn from history if it isn’t preserved for our knowledge?
  5. Most importantly, information lost can have a major impact on life today. For instance, Nikiforuk says, “The ELA [Experimental Lakes Area] cost $2 million a year to maintain, but its research saved governments around the world billions of dollars by preventing water contamination.”

Don’t let such a tragedy befall your collection. Digitize your historical documents today or make a case for your local historical society, library, or historical research facility. Digitizing historical documents properly can be time consuming, but it is well worth the investment.

The Benefits of Carefully Digitizing Historical Documents

If you are passionate about history and preserving knowledge and historical documents, digitization can keep them accessible for the foreseeable future. Here are five reasons why you won’t regret digitizing your historical documents.

  1. Multiple Backups. Digitized documents can never be lost if correctly mirrored onto physical hardware and cloud storage. Making multiple backups means that you can store them in different places, and cloud services allow you to access the documents from anywhere.
  2. Organization. Now you have a way to systematically organize files with search tags, creating a logical and efficient way to quickly research and locate the most relevant information.
  3. Search Capabilities. Do you have older typeset documents created before the advent of Microsoft Word? Your documents can be optically recognized through optical character recognition (OCR). While many vendors provide OCR services, very few strive for accuracy like the experts at Anderson Archival. Our OCR verification process ensures the finest accuracy for search. Instead of sifting through boxes and file cabinets, you’ll be able to simply enter your keywords into the search box, and let the computer do the work for you!
  4. Ability to Share. Not only will you be able to access the documents in an organized fashion with search features, but you can also offer a publicly accessible online reference database on your own website. If you want a more private approach, your database can be shared only with individuals behind a password-protected account management system or locally stored on your organization’s network.
  5. Peace of Mind. Is there any greater benefit than peace of mind? You will know that your historical documents, whether research materials, letters, or other historical data, are safe from whatever the world may throw at them.

If you are ready for your library to be digitized and saved for posterity, contact Anderson Archival today at 314.259.1900 or info@andersonarchival.com!

A Tailored Approach to Confidentiality

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Picture this: you’ve spent a long time saving for an expensive tailored suit. Late nights at the office finally paid off, and now you’re prepared to invest in a sleek bespoke suit customized exactly to your specifications.

When you need that suit to be styled and fitted, would you trust just any tailor listed at the top of your search results? Or would you take time to research who will handle your prized possession with the utmost care and caution?

It’s important to find a vendor who will keep your digitized collection safe from time’s unforgiving decay—one who cares about how your materials are handled during each step of the digitization process and beyond.

Ethical Standards

Materials in your collection are confidential, delicate, and unique. There’s no cookie-cutter approach; every collection is fulfilling a specific community’s needs. Whether that community is the entire world or only for your eyes, ethical values matter. Care and confidentiality should direct every decision in the preservation process.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) provides resources and guidelines for archivists across the country. This includes a detailed set of core values and a code of ethics that archival experts should use to steer their individual missions.

You need a vendor who incorporates SAA’s ethical standards—professional relationships, judgment, authenticity, security and protection, access and use, privacy, and trust. This not only affects the client-vendor communication, but it dictates how each element of your collection is treated in every phase of the project.

Storage and Destruction

Handing over your unique collection is no easy task. Like in the case of the Harding Affair Letters, you may have struggled to keep certain materials safe from people who wanted to hide or destroy timeless resources. Even if you trust the archivists you’re leaving your collection with, what guarantees they’ll treat the materials in a way that reflects their worth?

Find a team who lets you call the shots on how your materials are handled and stored. You need archival experts who are trained in working with fragile and sensitive documents. Additionally, the restoration techniques and equipment used by your vendor should be focused on maintaining the integrity of each artifact.

The rare client may ask that certain materials be permanently destroyed after preservation. In these cases, ensure your partner has a plan in place! Destruction processes should include responsible, secure methods to dispose of documents and hardware, taking careful consideration to maintain both the client and project’s privacy as well as taking into account environmental standards.

Legal Duty

Privacy and intellectual property are paramount. You should ensure every set of eyes or hands that touch your collection have signed a binding nondisclosure agreement (NDA). This includes archivists, office personnel, and perhaps even janitorial staff who have access to the premises. If there’s any chance someone could stumble across evidence of your collection, a strong confidentiality agreement protects your data at every conceptual step of its digitization.

Along with strict NDAs, make sure your selected vendor sets rigid internal guidelines about handling the intangible aspects of your collection. Staff should be told only the amount of information about a client needed to do their job—that part’s up to you. Your anonymity can be protected just as well as the physical collection.

 Documentation

Every project requires unique documentation, but setting general standards for record-keeping is a strong first step. Successful documentation ensures successful accountability, which is one of SAA’s core values.

At the start of every digitization project, make sure the vendor analyzes each item and the collection as a whole to assess what each task will entail. Have your original manuscripts or photos seen better days and need an extra round of cleanup in the digitization process? Are there torn pages, handwritten notes, or other text obstructions? Standardizing processes keeps the team on the same course, achieving uniform quality on each page of your collection.

Equally important to accountability is providing examples while the project is in progress. Need weekly reports on the development of your future online collection? Want a mockup or wireframe of the database or publication? Care to test the search functions or capabilities of your custom software? Make sure you have a partner committed to transparency and open communication.

Balancing Privacy and Access

Drawing again from SAA’s code of ethics, one of archiving’s ultimate goals is providing access and use. More often than not, if you’re investing the time and funds to preserve a collection it’s because you wish to share it with others. That’s why it’s at the top of SAA’s list of core values. Making your collection accessible is hard to do when it’s limited to boxes of papers or file cabinets in one physical location.

But good access and privacy don’t always play nicely with one another. Finding that middle ground is always possible, but this depends on you and your collection’s individual needs. If you want a database that’s for your organization’s internal use only, your digitization partner should approach your project differently than if you plan to market your collection for public use or charge users for access. Copyright laws, content, and protection of intellectual privacy put additional limits on the scope of access and use of your collection.

 

Just as you might wear a beautiful custom suit to a large public event or save it for a private party, you should be able to rest assured that your collection is tailored and fitted to perfection, crafted for its specific purpose. You should also feel confident that your measurements won’t be shared with anyone without your permission!

At Anderson Archival, we treat every step of a digitization project as a new challenge, letting your collection’s individual goals guide our path. This includes safeguarding your information and putting the privacy of your collection first. For more information about how we value confidentiality in our archival process, contact us today at info@andersonarchival.com or 314.259.1900.

Is Social Media the Best Way to Share Your Digital Library?

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Even on the most social, shallow corners of the internet, it is becoming hard to miss the world of museums and archives. For advocates of sharing and learning from history, that’s excellent news.

When building or preserving a collection, a common pressing question is “How do I get this important document in front of those who don’t even know it exists?”

The largely on-demand nature of the internet means that knowledge and familiarity have to, in some way, precede a search. But when your collection lives outside the realm of the typically encountered, searches can be rare.

Social media circumvents this. While gathering content and followers can be a slow process, a digital library shared on Twitter or Instagram can go from obscure to viral in the blink of an eye. Many museums have already captured this momentum. Successful accounts like New York Times Archives and The Met Museum set the bar high, but so-called smaller collections can find a niche audience in this medium as well.

With these successes, it becomes easier to understand why some museums and collection curators build their sharing strategy around social media.

Does this tactic encourage viewers to treat their experience superficially, as Philip Kennicott argues in a review, or does it fill a desire on participants’ parts to be entertained and to interact? If “the only reason people know about it is because of Instagram,” , isn’t that, on the simplest level, more eyes on the art?

Ultimately, there is no denying that social media boosts awareness. Whether it changes the viewing and learning experiences is still to be discovered.

Why would a curator or director refuse to embrace and utilize social media in sharing their collection?

The Topic Is Too Niche

The internet is an ideal environment and means of finding researchers and appreciators of that very niche. Take, for example, this account about the former St. Louis football team, the Cardinals. While the Cardinals are a ubiquitous name for St. Louis baseball, the historical football team is far less known, and yet this Twitter account showcasing historical Cardinals football items has found a large following.

The Topic Isn’t Interesting

Wait. You’ve spent years and money preserving a collection that isn’t interesting? Doubtful! There may be dense text included in a collection, but interest is in the eye of the beholder – and there are ways to showcase even the most seemingly inaccessible collection .

A Social Media Account Is Just More Work. Who Is to Say There Will Even Be a Return on This Effort?

If reaching the technologically savvy and younger generations is a priority for you and your collection, social media isn’t something you can afford to ignore. There are alternative solutions for organizations with tighter budgets or time constraints. The Library of Congress archive blog has a technical how-to for creating a bot that randomly shares images from an archive.

One of the many benefits of technology is the way that it constantly makes itself easier to use, so the possibilities for bots and programs managing social media accounts can only grow. Right now, bots may not generate the same level of excitement as a curated account, but they are better than nothing!

My Collection Isn’t Digitized

It would be difficult to share on a digital medium that which is not digital. A collection kept on paper, in boxes, is not only limited in the means of gaining an audience, being available for research, and enriching the lives of strangers, but it is also at risk of loss. Anderson Archival is ready to build a digital library from your materials and ensure the safety of your collection with secure digital backups.

An audience for your collection is out there, and social media can help you find it. Creating a digital library is half the battle, but don’t let that library go unused!

Are you ready to start a social media account for your digital collection?

Three Ways to Make the Most of Your Digital Collection’s Social Media Account

  1. Tie history to today. Use hashtags like #OnThisDay to showcase artifacts published “on this day in history,” or take a page from the marketer’s playbook and tie posts to trending topics. These may not be successful individual posts, but inclusion in hashtags may gain followers who were previously unaware of your collection.Is a piece of your collection relevant to breaking news? Share it, but be sure to make the context clear.
  2. Utilize trending topics within the archival community like #ArchivesHashtagParty, usually hosted by the twitter account. Members of the archival community and interested bystanders watch these topics. There are few other ways to put your collection in view of so many eyes!In addition to using hashtags, use social media to foster relationships within the archival community. Interactions between museums and collections can go viral, but even more beneficially, can mean shared audiences and resources.
  3. Create something worth sharing. Rather than pinpointing what this means for your particular collection, it is easier to identify a social media post that isn’t worth sharing. Search “history twitter” or “museum instagram” and examine the results. Does the account post interesting information and not just a link? Are the images compelling? Many accounts make the mistake of linking to the museum or collection website without giving a reason they wanted to share the post.There is something that just works about the digital library social media accounts for the Missouri History Museum and the St. Louis Art Museum.

What you do with your collection and how you share it is up to you. Anderson Archival is here to show you the possibilities and help make them happen. Is it important that your collection is preserved as a digital library, kept safe from loss, and available for future generations? Anderson Archival specializes in digital preservation and secure backup. Contact us today at info@andersonarchival.com to talk about your collection or sharing it with social media.