Learn: Digital Preservation vs. Digitization
It may feel like the terms “digital preservation” and “digitization” are interchangeable, but it’s better to think of them as fingers and thumbs. All thumbs may be fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. Digitization is the thumb and digital preservation are the fingers. Digitization is necessary to the overall function of digital preservation, but […]
Access Is Essential!, Part 2
by Shana Scott As I outlined in my last post, the purpose of preservation is to protect an object, document, or other material and ensure it lasts for future generations to see and use. I talked about accessibility and what it means for all types of people accessing physical collections. Here’s a statement that very […]
Learn: What is a Digital Collection or Digital Library?
Whether you’re a researcher, student, librarian, or bibliophile, it’s likely you’ve accessed a digital collection or enjoyed a digital library. Using these convenient resources may lead you to wonder how to make your own collection sharable online. Learn about the concepts of digital collections and digital libraries in this Anderson Archival explainer. What Is a […]
Holding History in Our Hands
Creating Life-Altering Memories “I am honored to work for a company where I get to help our clients preserve historical documents,” says content specialist Marcia Spicer of her work at Anderson Archival. “Whether they are the private memories from someone who never imagined their words would survive through the generations or a public collection that […]
3 Ways to Make Your Historical Archive Impactful Today
In leisure time alone, the average human processes at least 34 gigabytes of information daily. On the internet, this looks like their newsfeed, the endless scroll of what friends and acquaintances are doing at any given moment, and the 24-hour news cycle. Even if a user is searching for something specific, they’re bound to be […]
Hunting for History – And the Perfect Digital Archive
For years, the city of Salem, Massachusetts has been collecting, preserving, and slowly digitizing historical records dating back 400 years. Salem, most notable to laypeople as the location of the infamous witch trials, is home to a rich variety of historical organizations. Many of these organizations have digitally shared their own collections, but in October […]
Digitizing the Oldest Black Newspaper in America—One Photograph at a Time
When John H. Murphy founded The Afro-American newspaper in 1892, his goal was to combine three separate church publications into a single-page newsletter. Murphy was both a former slave and a Civil War veteran, and in the Reconstruction era, The Afro-American served to inform and unite his Maryland community. Little did he know, it would […]
Learn: What Is the Best Way to Preserve Historical Documents in Storage?
Learn about the factors you need to take into account to safely store delicate or aging documents with minimal damage and how digitization can help preserve documents into the future. What Is the Best Way to Preserve Historical Documents in Storage?
Access to Your Archive: Make It Easy, Make a Difference
Why digitize? This is the question many archive owners, collectors, and curators face. In an increasingly digital world, analog access to collections and archives is still the norm. But should it be? A Philosophical Question If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? […]
Preservation Hesitation? Just Get Started!
Do you have a historical collection that deserves digital preservation but keep coming back to the same problems? Maybe your project is so extensive you don’t know where to start, or you simply can’t afford an archival project right now. Even if you’ve owned a collection for decades, you’ve probably noticed more recent emphasis on […]
