5 Factors That Can Affect the Timeframe of Your Archival Project

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

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

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

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

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

Handling and Scanning Materials

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

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

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

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

Image Cleanup

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

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

OCR and Proofing

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

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

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

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

Tagging and Organization

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

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

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

Context of Collection

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

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

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

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

Transcription from the Crowd: Three Success Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH)

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

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

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

#TranscribeBond with University of Virginia

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

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

The Library of Congress: By the People

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

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

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

Crowdsourcing Saves Costs and Enriches the World

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

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

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

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

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

Who Will Use This Collection and How? All About Use Cases

August 15, 2019/in Custom Software, Digital Collections, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

Use cases. It’s simply a term for capturing the functional requirements of a digital library. Each use case is written from the user’s perspective, defining who they are and how they want and expect to use the digital collection.

Understanding use cases is essential for determining how a collection will be best delivered, and what functionality needs to be built in.

Let’s imagine a collector owns a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. personal library of catalogues* that spans nearly 75 years, and they want to digitize it. Right now, they’re the only person using it in their study of American history to provide the cultural context of what people were buying, using, and interested in at particular points in time.

Currently, the magazines in the collection are physically arranged by date—this is how the collector imagines they will organize the collection digitally. They have already done a lot of physical work to categorize the collection, including making notes of what is in which volume.

The collector wants to make their collection of catalogues available to other historians, schools, and individuals, so they decide to employ a technical archival company to help develop the digitized collection and figure out the best way to showcase it.

When the collector talks to an archival company, one of the questions a digital archivist asks is, “What are your use cases?”

In other words, who will use this collection? In this imagined case of a digitized Sears catalogue collection, the collector works with the archival company to make estimations of these categories of users:

Historians and collectors
Students
Librarians and researchers
Historical Fiction Writers

Next, a sample of potential users should be interviewed about how they would like to use this collection. It’s important to talk to users directly because the quality of requirements will be better if they come directly from the users. Assuming how a group would utilize the collection could mean missing something crucial.

Read more about how Anderson Archival builds digital collections!

Discovering the use cases for these specific groups will help determine how the collection will operate, how it will appear, and how it will be accessed.

The first interview is with a researcher of Western Expansion. She wants to do specific research on the homes available for purchase in the catalogue. She plans to compare the results found in this collection to others she has found in scholarly work. She mentions that she would like to use search to narrow results by date, model number or name of the house, and price range. She wants to be able to search for exact phrases found in scholarly work, to verify that it appears in the collection.

The second interview is with a university student. He informs the interviewer that he does much of his electronic research on his phone. He mentions that he usually sends interesting articles or pictures to himself to later reference.

And the interview process continues.

The collection will need to accommodate the needs of all of these interviewees. Some key points of the interview findings might look something like this:

Historians and collectors	Need a way to save pertinent documents or quotes easily. Want the ability to print historically accurate pages.
Students	Want a fast, accurate search of keywords, mobile access, and the ability to share pages electronically.
Librarians and researchers	Know what they are looking for and expect to be able to search dates, volumes, and issues. Want to search exact phrases and verify what they know is in the collection.
Historical fiction writers	Want to page through issues to get a sense of the era and need to search by date, category, or item type.

Once interviews have concluded and use case scenarios have been compiled, a technical archival company can then recommend the best tools, and in some cases, a custom software solution for the collection.

For Anderson Archival, this step is utilized in the development process. Knowing the current and potential users of a collection helps to determine how best the digital library should be delivered. Options can be as simple as using a PDF viewer to access a private library for only a few users, to as complex as custom online software with logins.

Technology is constantly evolving. If the collector wants to invest in digitizing right the first time, the collection should be optimized for cutting-edge technology so it will easily adapt to the new and better software and hardware developed every year.

Of course, each collection will be different and have specific needs for digitization, tagging, and its interface, but the goal for anyone digitizing their collection and defining use cases is to make their collection accessible and functional for as many types of users as possible.

Here are a few more tips for building your use cases:

Consider how your collection is different from others. What features could this collection offer that others do not?
As you think about use cases, focus on users’ functional needs and not software design.
Often, collectors think they know how users will use the collection, but actually interviewing potential users will uncover needs for critical functionality that otherwise is likely to be lost.
Developing detailed use cases, taking the time to learn from users, will make the final product of your digital collection much better!

Whether you’re developing use cases for a private collection or because you want to share your collection with the world, once your collection is digitized, you’ll have peace of mind. Your digital library will be preserved for generations to come and now others will be able to interact with it easily and share it.

If you want help developing a use case for your collection, contact Anderson Archival at 314.259.1900 or email us today!

*This theoretical collection is used purely for example purposes. Sears has a portion of their catalogue available online here.

The Path to Funding Your Archival Project

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

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

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

Tell Your Story

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

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

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

Ask for Donations from Private Donors

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

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

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

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

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

Apply for Grants

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

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

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

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

Don’t stop there!

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

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

Protecting and Preserving History in Uncertain Times

July 22, 2018/in Custom Software, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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.

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.

A Tailored Approach to Confidentiality

May 31, 2018/in General, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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?

May 24, 2018/in Digital Collections, General, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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

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.
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.
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.

Worry-Free Audits with Anderson Archival

February 20, 2018/in Document Scanning, General, Paperless Office, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

Many businesses find themselves subject to regular audits by government agencies or conduct detailed internal audits on a regular basis. Whatever the nature of the audits, monthly, quarterly, or yearly cycles of digitization can significantly expedite this process and preserve content for digital storage, saving them for the future.

Handwritten notes are often necessary in industries where detail and security matters. Our digitization experts provide clean scans of documents of all types while keeping them secure.

Anderson Archival’s team is dedicated to accuracy when preserving your records. Where large-scale scanning firms may bulk process papers for scanning without care for organization, preservation of originals, or readability, our specialization in true digital preservation makes us the ideal choice when businesses look for accurate and organized digital scans.

Consolidate Physical Storage

Audits often provide incentive to organize records that would otherwise stack up unmonitored. Performing monthly, quarterly, or yearly cycles of digitization in preparation for government audits takes this even further. Not only will your records receive careful organization, but with digital scans the need for physical storage becomes all but eliminated.

Certainly, there are cases where physical originals are necessary. Anderson Archival’s focus on preservation ensures that these originals will be treated carefully and returned to you in top condition–which isn’t always the case with bulk scanning firms. However, once scanned, many physical copies are no longer needed. In those cases, we are happy to facilitate confidential shredding that frees up physical space in your office or storage facility.

Advanced Search for More Efficient Work

Through simple folder storage or advanced search functions with metadata added to your digital collection by our team, these documents continue to provide use to employees beyond the audit cycle. Instead of searching through file folders for a particular document or turn of phrase, you will be empowered to search the digital scans for titles or quoted content and get results in seconds.

Then, the digital copy of each document is already at hand for reference or sharing with a co-worker or client. If a government or internal audit requires only specific documents, the search function enables the fast collection and sending of these documents.

For even more advanced searches, our team can provide handwriting transcription. This makes not only print documents, but your notes accessible by search.

Original: Photographed image from Goodrich’s Third Reader

Bulk scanning firms may offer optical character recognition (OCR) services, but these programs bring automatic results that are often riddled with errors, rendering search features useless. In the case of handwriting, highlighting, or other color interference, the automatic OCR process may leave whole swathes of data illegible or completely blank. Not the case with our detail-oriented team.

ocr results not proofread by professionals

OCR: Many bulk-scanning firms run originals through software without proofing the results.

Save valuable time and energy, and perform more efficient work. Expedite that work with Anderson Archival. Contact us today to discuss scanning for audits: call 314.259.1900 or email info@andersonarchival.com.

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