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Everlasting Ti Amo – Italian Love Letters Preserved

July 14, 2021/in Client Story, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

These days, some might consider letter writing an outdated form of communication or even a lost art. But at a time when one couldn’t simply send a text or email to a faraway love, these collections are a testament to everlasting human relationships. Correspondence has the ability to tell a story, and a collection of letters can keep a romance alive even after death.

We spoke with Carla Pasetti, whose family recently brought her collection to Anderson Archival for digitization help. The collection included hundreds of handwritten items from her father Armando to her mother Evelina, written in Italian. While this collection of letters and other paper miscellanea like postcards and translucent notes was in fairly good condition and enjoyable for the team to work on, it presented some other preservation challenges. We discuss working with a conservator to help organize and stabilize a collection before digital preservation occurs as well as the future of this romantic digitized collection.

AA: To start, what would you like to tell our audience about your collection and its history?

This was a collection of letters that my parents wrote to each other back in the early 50s. My father came to the United States back in 1938. He was fourteen years old and came from a small agricultural town of San Martino dall’Argine near Mantova, Italy. He came over to work for his uncle and aunt on The Hill [in St. Louis, MO].

On one of his trips back to Italy—which weren’t very frequent at that time, you know—he met my mother [whose] sister was engaged to be married to his brother. That’s how they met. I guess they immediately connected. When [my father went] back to St. Louis, they corresponded over about two and a half years before he went back to Italy and married her. And then a few months later, she came to join him in St. Louis.

There were quite a few letters and postcards, [which] I think totaled 473. We always knew that they were around, you know, just in a cigar box in the basement. My mother passed in 2019, and my father passed in late 2020. We wanted to just leave [the collection] until he had passed, but we always had an intention to do something with it.

Did you anticipate any particular challenges to digitizing these letters?

I knew that, in the end, I wanted to make a master book of the letters, and I knew that I wanted to use something like Shutterfly or Snapfish. I wanted this to be an homage to their correspondence back and forth. I was like, ‘I’m not going to alter these or edit at all. I just really want to have a picture of each letter that is clear enough that I can read.’

Now, some elements of the collection weren’t letters. Can you speak to some of these other items, like the postcards and translucent materials?

I think one of the ones you’re referring to might be the Easter card. [In the photo book] I just want to see their handwriting and what they’re saying to each other, so I didn’t [include the Easter card]. But I am glad that my mom especially sent a lot of postcards. That breaks up the collection in a way.

Translucent card

With a creative approach to capturing all details

All images property of Carla Pasetti and Angela Holland.

Images used with permission.

How does working with a conservator fit into this story?

During one of my many trips to St. Louis, we contacted [Conservator] Noah Smutz and brought the collection to him. He’s very, very experienced and was able to restore them, flatten them, and unfold them. [The letters were on] this very thin paper that was folded up, and back then they used different paper, especially in Europe. I don’t know if it was because of the weight of the airmail in that time. It took him about three and a half months to do, but he did a great job. He was actually the one that recommended Anderson Archival. He just said you guys know what you’re doing, and really, that’s what we needed.

So you connected with a conservator for the physical letters and you had a rough plan to create your photo book. How did Anderson Archival bridge the vision to the reality?

Well, I knew that I wanted a book of them. But you guys were able to really narrow it down to, ‘What kind of file do you want?’ So really [for] the digitization of the collection, you guys were very helpful. We decided to go with the JPEG form and definitely higher resolution because they’re kind of hard to read, some of them.

Another way that Anderson Archival helped was guiding us in how the files were organized. That was something that, I mean, it was like, ‘Do you want all the postcards in one folder?’ We wanted them in some sort of sequential order so that I could just pull them into the book.

Planning can be the trickiest part—aside from imaging itself, of course. Some of the translucent materials proved to be new challenges for our team.

I feel like you guys did a great job of doing that with the black background. It took a little bit of [emailing and approvals] back and forth, but not a whole lot. The timeliness was great. Everything was just a good experience.

A thin letter (with illustration) from Evelina to Armando. Property of Carla Pasetti and Angela Holland. Used with permission.

Did working with Smutz during the conservation steps of the project help you find anything new about your collection?

I guess back then there weren’t zip codes. My mom would write ‘St. Louis, MO’ and then in parentheses write ’10.’ And I’m like, ‘What the heck is that? Like, did she make a mistake?’ But it’s the final two numbers of the zip code, because where my dad was, was 63110. The ‘10’ was the post office’s way, before they had zip codes, to identify where in St. Louis they were. I had no idea.

[The letters] had all been folded, and so they were curved, and they were not in any sort of order. They did a great job, my parents did, really preserving the sequence of these letters. They were very good about putting the day, the month, the year, the time of day, and the place. We literally brought the cigar box to Noah, and he kind of carefully opened it and saw what we had.

What’s it been like to share such a personal collection with experts like Smutz and our team?

You know, going through them and reading some of them…I feel kind of like [I’m] reading somebody else’s mail, you know? But [my parents] were very sweet and tender with each other, loving words and stuff like that. It was very innocent, but just really special and very caring. Because they had the common family members, they kept tabs on each other’s family. My father was sending money back to Italy to help out his family.

Even just their salutations…I mean, you don’t have to know a whole lot of Italian [to understand]. But…my dad would throw in English [too], like [writing] ‘“Ti amo” that means “I love you” in English.’ This is very sweet.

What is it like to work on the photo book now that you have the collection conserved and digitized?

I’m very happy with it. The book is enormous, 11”x14”. This whole process, because I had to do them letter by letter, took probably about 10 to 15 hours of time. Now I think that because I know the layouts and how they look after getting the hard copy, I think it’ll take me a little bit less, maybe 10, for the other two. I’ve been able to break it up with their postcards, but I think in the next couple of volumes, I’ll add in more pictures of them when they were young and that sort of thing, just to mix it up a bit.

But it’s turning out really good. At first my middle sister was like, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in having a copy.’ But then she took a look at Volume One and was like, ‘No, I’ll take one.’ My kids want to look at them. They don’t read Italian right now, but it’s part of their history so I am happy that we are archiving them.

Was there anything else new that you discovered maybe about your family, or just about the collection itself, once you had the digitized files in front of you?

Like I said, I’m only [on] Volume One. I think I learn things every time I do this. I haven’t read every single letter, but I do try and read parts of every few. And that is, like I said before, it’s really emotional, and that I find things about them in their youth that, of course, I didn’t know. I think that’s super special and the reason why people should do things like this.

I was telling a friend about the collection, and she said she has letters that her uncle who was in the US Army wrote and she is putting together a book [with the original hard copies]. I was like, ‘Yeah, you should digitize everything, and then make this book,’ in order to preserve them instead of (or in addition to) just using the hard copies in a book. This way she can make multiple copies and share this part of her family history with her extended family members.

Have a vision for your collection that you’d like a little assistance bringing to life? Let’s talk. Call us today at 314.259.1900.

Beyond Image Capture

July 7, 2021/in Digital Collections, Digital Restoration, Document Scanning, Preservation /by Anderson Archival

In the realm of preservation, it’s essential that a digital file—a digital representation of the original object—accurately captures the current state of a physical object. The image file should effectively serve as a placeholder, an equivalent representation to the original object. That, along with secure storage and access, make up the field of digital preservation. For many original documents, this type of digital file is sufficient for reading, examination, and study.

However, some original documents are not suitable for study or examination with only a preservation master image. Yes, a digital record of the object exists, but no one can use it.

In these cases, a digital file provides an opportunity for editing, enhancement, and even restoration without any harm coming to the original document or preservation master image. When presented alongside the preservation master, these files provide a fuller, more complete picture of the object itself. They might even reveal details that are not discernable when viewing the physical document.

Here are some of the situations you may encounter and remediate with the help of digital archivists.

Ultra-Faint Text

Frustrated that time or sun exposure has faded the ink on an original document? Perhaps the original author wrote only in faint pencil. Even documents written today will eventually fade if the originals are kept in sunlight or the ink isn’t color-fast. Regardless of how the damage happened, collectors or family members are left with a one-of-a-kind original that they can’t read.

Thankfully, there are methods to enhance what little detail is available. If you’ve ever used a copy machine, you’ve likely played a little with brightness and contrast. Sometimes, adjusting the amount of light on an original is enough to draw out the faded text. Ultra-faint text can require far more digital manipulation to bring out the writing and can result in images that no longer accurately represent the original.

To retain visual context, these often-colorful copies should be reviewed in addition to the originals. Hyper-enhanced digital files are by no means a replacement the preservation master image, the digital files may offer more functionality than the original.

Inaccessible Original Text

It’s difficult enough when bound items don’t have the range of motion sufficient to fully open, but when the binding is set over the text or the original author scrawled notes deep into the gutter, capturing the entire document can feel impossible.

Acquiring seemingly inaccessible text depends on your preservation priorities.

Does the bound, complete object provide more historic value than a deconstructed version? It may be preferable to hire a conservator who is trained to relax the binding while keeping the original intact.
Were printed periodicals bound as a form of collecting, as was common for journals and newspapers? Disbinding could be the best option to restore and capture their original state.
Is capturing the text more important than maintaining the integrity of the physical document? Evaluate how much and what kind of damage you are willing to accept in order to create an complete digital record.

That said, there are many reasons why a collector may not want to unbind or deconstruct a physical object. In these cases, it’s up to the digital archivist to explore solutions with the collector to make inaccessible original text clear.

Not all digitization suites are as sophisticated as the one performing reconstructive X-rays on ancient locked letters, but most are equipped to help bring initially inaccessible original text to light. A book cradle used in conjunction with high-resolution photography can capture the interior of books that don’t have a large opening range, and comparisons with the physical pages can help a digital specialist recreate areas cut off by binding.

Original map from The History of the Roman Empire, Volume I.

Restored

Reversing Damage

Looking at an aged and time-worn document can feel disheartening. Once a document has been damaged, it is unlikely that it will ever reflect its former state again, even with pricy restoration. For many historical documents, the condition of a document is just as important to capture as the information it contains. Conservators can address physical damage to a document without erasing what time has done to it, stabilizing it for the future and buying time for it to be digitized.

Even if originals cannot be repaired or restored, there are numerous reasons why a collection owner may wish to have their damaged originals digitally restored. Many restored digital files are not expected to replace the preservation master image, but are used for side-by-side display, easy access copies, easier study, or historically-accurate reprinting and republishing.

Digital restoration can provide collectors with any level of visual corrections, from undoing stains to digitally compiling multiple torn pieces of paper together. These digital versions can be made “clean” again, erasing hundreds of years of handling and wear without disturbing the physical object.

This option isn’t for everyone or every collection, and it certainly should never be used as a master preservation file. That said, there is a time and place for this important digital work!

If your collection is nearing the point of potentially unreadable digitization, there are some solutions you can try. Until the collection can be digitized, store originals out of sunlight and away from any other environmental exposure. Consult with a conservator to see if tightly bound material can be loosened, folded items relaxed, and torn items repaired.

When beginning down the road of digital preservation, it’s important to consider your goals for the collection, including potential roadblocks like damage or difficult-to-read text. Keeping long-term preservation goals top of mind will guide you to the appropriate solutions for your needs. Explore the many digital restoration options with experts to make your digital collection functional as well as preserved.

Are you ready to discuss your collection’s potential? Give Anderson Archival a call today!

Capturing these photographs was essential

Who Can You Trust with Your History?

June 14, 2021/in Client Story, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image degradation with silvering

Silvering minimized through editing

Image degradation with silvering

Silvering minimized through alternate capture angles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adopting Digital Preservation for a Legacy of Caring

May 18, 2021/in Client Story, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cayuga Centers legacy of caring digitized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harriet Tubman appears in the Cayuga Register

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holding History in Our Hands

April 13, 2021/in Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation /by Anderson Archival

Creating Life-Altering Memories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does that mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Should I Digitize? 3 Ways to Decide

March 22, 2021/in Digital Collections, Digital Restoration, Document Scanning /by Anderson Archival

If you’ve uncovered a box of records or your organization just inherited a building full of community archives, how do you determine what should be digitized first? What can be deprioritized and why?

Prioritizing the materials in your collection is no small challenge, especially for non-profits and institutions that value their history and mission. Trying to decide what is most “important” or “necessary” can be downright painful when you can see the inherent value and history behind every photo and document. Everything deserves to be preserved! While you’re right about that aspect, your institution only has so many hands on deck and gigabytes of storage. Some hard decisions will have to be made.

Luckily, you aren’t the first collector facing this challenge. There are three simple questions you can ask yourself about your collection to make prioritizing materials for digitization a little easier. Rest assured that any digitization is better than no digitization, and any step forward—regardless of how it looks for your organization—is a step in the right direction.

1. What Stories Can Your Collection Tell?

The point of preserving your collection is to immortalize it for future generations. What stories do you want your collection to tell in ten, twenty, or two hundred years? Perhaps you have an album of photographs that is about to pass its one-hundred-year anniversary, or maybe there’s a specific era or region your collection spans that has recently come into public awareness. This can be a great opportunity to reach a bigger audience with your collection.

What makes your collection special? Who will be most interested in what you have to share, and how can you reach new audiences? Your collection will work double duty when you choose to digitize and showcase elements that create stories in the public interest. If you have content in your collection that’s unique or can’t be found elsewhere, use that uniqueness to promote your collection and the ways it can be shared.

A sudden burst of public interest can be a great incentive to monetize your collection, or a part of it. Learn more about monetizing your collection here.

2. What Parts of Your Collection Are Most Significant, or Most At Risk?

When considering an artifact for digital preservation, you must think about what the item is made of and how it will be used. What materials will have the shortest lifespan where they are currently housed or in their current condition?

Don’t overlook high-use elements of your collection just because they seem to be holding up well. Collections that are frequently handled by researchers will age much more quickly than others, even if they start in pristine condition. Digitizing high-use parts of collections will not only facilitate easier search and use by their audiences, but it will also reduce the amount of damage taken by these essential works.

Regardless of the materials they are made of or how often they are used, historical artifacts deteriorate at a particular rate depending on the environment they’re housed in. If you have an object with physical characteristics that would potentially accelerate deterioration, like paper with iron gal ink, or a highly-flammable, unstable nitrate photograph, it should take priority over documents that have been properly housed and will therefore show their age slower.

Damaged, high-use, and highly-invested-in artifacts should be at the front of the digitization line.

3. What Can You Digitize Well With What You Have?

This is arguably the most important factor to consider when prioritizing the digitization of your collection, simply because planning alone does not get you very far. It’s important to consider the resources necessary to make the digitization happen correctly.

Will your organization need to raise funds to digitize some or all of your collection? If so, prioritize what can be done with what you have, and plan to tackle the more challenging materials when you have those additional resources.

Are damaged or fragile materials safe to handle on your own, or do you need to create a separate plan that partners with a conservation expert or a digitization vendor?

Are there enough people in your organization to perform the digitization? If you only have one flatbed scanner and one staff member available, scanning might take much longer than you initially planned for. In this case, you might consider choosing to scan the rarest or most interesting newspaper clippings, then waiting to scan the pieces that are sturdier or less urgently needed.

No matter how you choose to prioritize digitization of your collection, use policy to define and defend what you choose to digitize. Documenting the process is an integral part of any digital preservation undertaking. Since every collection, organization, and mission is unique, policy that outlines what should be preserved how and when serves as a steady guide.

Large or small, your collection is important and deserves to be preserved for the ages. Don’t put off digitization of your collection simply because you aren’t sure where to start. Anderson Archival is here to help—talk with us today!

3 Ways to Make Your Historical Archive Impactful Today

February 15, 2021/in Digital Collections, Website Design /by Anderson Archival

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 distracted because the Internet is built to monetize our attention. Only the shiniest, most intriguing, emotion-laden ads, sites, and headlines get the spoils.

In this high-competition virtual world, how do you make a historical archive or digital library stand out on the web? Here are 3 ways to make your archive impactful today!

Connect Documents in the Collection to One Another

How can your archive invite users to spend more time on it to facilitate discoveries and new knowledge? Create your own rabbit hole of connected information for users to explore. History doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Add links between people, places, and key terms in your collection. This can be done in the text itself, on a helpful sidebar, or though metadata.

If your collection is displayed as text, adding links to other related documents or categories could look similar to what you see on a blog or online newspaper. When a paragraph from a historical diary names a location, that text can link to a category page that aggregates all content in the collection connected to that location. A name? The text could link to a short Who Is explainer to provide context, list additional appearances of that name in the collection, or connect to works that person has authored.

This text and metadata accompanies a painting by Raphael in Google’s Arts and Culture explorer. While it doesn’t provide a lot of interlinking, users can view more work from Raphael and learn about walnut as a medium.

If the collection is primarily image-based or layered with text, it might not be possible to integrate links into the content itself. In this case, a sidebar or section of content links below each page might be helpful. If this section displays linked metadata, users can easily see more from the same author, related to the same keywords or key people and places.

Many times, this metadata already exists in text within a collection. Curating a collection of related links takes care and time, but even one or two links can enhance users’ experience and encourage them to dive deeper.

Have questions about digital collections? Take a look at What Is a Digital Collection or Digital Library? for answers.

Connect Documents to Their Time and Place in Culture

The contents of a single archive may not have all the necessary items to create full context of the time and place in which a person and their documents existed. Filling in the gaps for visitors of the collection can take a lot of dedicated time and effort, and may require partnerships with other organizations and collections. But the effort can produce greater user engagement and allow the collection to become a valuable resource for researchers or historians.

There are many ways to create a more interactive, user-focused collection.

Maps: Creating a map to track a person or item’s movement in history can provide the context needed to understand its importance. Users can orient the documents in the real world with familiar places that they can better connect with. Using historic maps can be useful, but online services, like Google Maps, can be just as effective and oftentimes more interactive.

Infographics: Creating infographics may take time and skill, but they are a great way to track or represent ideas. They are also easy for users to follow and can include links or pictures to allow more engagement. Want to show how events relate to one another or highlight main ideas with historical context without overwhelming the user with a page full of text? An infographic may be the way to go.

Historical Dictionaries: Not everything from two hundred, three hundred, or a thousand years ago will make sense to a modern reader, even with historical context. Linking text that may mean something different in its time or is no longer in common usage to a historic dictionary can give more value to items that would otherwise confuse more than illuminate.

Connect Documents to Today

Blogs and articles utilizing an “On this day in history…” connection to the past can be a fun reminder of what the world was like throughout history. Articles that highlight past events on the date they occurred can be a great idea to help users connect to the collection in a new way. They can also be effective social media posts to engage your audience beyond the collection itself and keep interest even when there is nothing new about the collection to report.

What you share has a lot to do with why you want to share. We dive into many of the reasons to make your archive available online, and the benefits of doing so.

There’s no one way to build an archival flashback. The San Diego Union Tribune offers scanned images of their old edition along with a newly transcribed copy of the featured article, giving both easy reading and on-page context. On the other hand, the Library of Congress’s “Today in History” feature gives an overview of an event with images of items relating to the subject of the article. The Chicago Tribune goes a step further and offers not one event in history but many throughout the years.

However you choose to feature your collection’s place in time, a connection to the present, even if only by date, can be a great way to engage your audience and have them coming back again and again.

Anderson Archival helps build digital libraries and collections through high-touch digitization, OCR, metadata, and design. Wherever you are in your digitization journey, we can help.

Hunting for History – And the Perfect Digital Archive

December 1, 2020/in Digital Collections, General, Preservation, Website Design /by Anderson Archival

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 2020, this collection of official city records was made publicly available on the internet for the first time. For genealogists, historians, and city officials, this new resource provides easy access to data about the property, people, and town.

What is the best way to make your collection the most useful to the biggest number of people?

If you’re in the business of discovering and utilizing sources like the new City of Salem archives, then you know that not all digital archives are created equal. Searching a poorly-made digital archive can take just as long as rifling through cabinets of paper. Accurate, faceted search; clearly imaged documents; and remote access can mean the difference between a frustrating hunt and a satisfying find.

For archivists on the other side of this seek-and-find equation, it may feel daunting to look at piles of documents and wonder what is the best way to make your collection the most useful to the biggest number of people? The answer may appear so insurmountable that it halts the process of digitization and preservation before the first page is scanned.

The first step toward a digital archive, as with any historical project, is research. It’s best to come to digital collections from all directions. New and existing archives provide examples of what’s possible, and by looking at these archives with a critical eye, you can make note of what characteristics work and what doesn’t before beginning an archive of your own.

The Salem Archives

At first glance, the City of Salem digital archives pose an unassuming figure. Considering their focus on facilitating government access and research for those who already have an idea of what they’re searching for, this isn’t particularly surprising. Lots of color, graphics, and curated tours were never the goal here. For a researcher used to traversing digital archives, this might be refreshing. But for a casual genealogist or family historian just getting started, Salem’s stark entry may feel overwhelming and leave them turning to another source.

With thriving digital libraries in and about Salem already in existence, the City of Salem likely considered what audience was deemed most likely to utilize their site and for what purpose. This type of survey is one that should go into any preservation project, including digitization for public access.

In their new archive, the City of Salem prioritized powerful search tools over appealing design. Faceted, full-text search offers highlighted, detailed results in the primary source documents. A researcher or government official who comes to this library with a question within the collection’s scope, won’t need to look long before they find an answer.

Understanding the scope of an archive also helps the creators decide just how much post-scan processing is needed for a collection. The City of Salem archives feature impressively accurate OCR, but close examination of the results reveals that the searchable text layer was not corrected to match the original—some searches for exact numbers or phrases will not be fruitful. Handwritten text is also not recorded digitally.

Once a digital archive is live, it may reveal shortcomings as well as successes. Depending on how the choices made in its inception affect intended use or if the archive finds a new audience needing different features, the City of Salem may choose to revisit the collection to accommodate the new demands.

Interconnective Digital Libraries

Just as there is an art to building a digital collection, there is an art to finding the right resource for the answers you seek as a researcher. What answers does the collection provide? What is the scope of the documents included in a given collection? Who is the expected user of the digital library? There is an understanding, too, that no digital library exists in a vacuum. Each is piece of a virtual community, a web of information and sources.

Reviewing other Salem-focused archives brings this into focus.

Even without drilling down into collections and search features, the home pages of these digital libraries provide a degree of instant understanding.

Historic Salem and The House of the Seven Gables, for example, would pair nicely with the City of Salem archives as deep dives into the architecture, ownership, and history of key locations. In addition to some full text historical works, Salem Public Library’s Local History section offers visual history that could go hand in hand with their Oregon Historic Photograph Collections. These, along with the more hyper-focused Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, are all clear in scope and what they have to offer the curious researcher. Together, they provide a more comprehensive picture than any could separately.

Just as there is an art to building a digital collection, there is an art to finding the right resource for the answers you seek as a researcher.

Pondering these questions and investigating existing digital libraries will help your soon-to-be digital library take shape. And if you’re ready to move forward towards digitization and want a partner in your efforts, the experts at Anderson Archival are ready to help.

Wikimedia Commons

Digitizing the Oldest Black Newspaper in America—One Photograph at a Time

November 16, 2020/in Custom Software, Digital Collections, Document Scanning, Preservation, Special Projects /by Anderson Archival

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 become America’s oldest running black newspaper. By Murphy’s death in 1922, the newspaper had grown to cover most of the Atlantic coast and expanded to thirteen regional editions.

At its heart, The Afro-American (now simply Afro-American, or colloquially, Afro) was a mouthpiece for black America. It documented everyday life in black neighborhoods that the mainstream white media didn’t cover. Wedding and funeral announcements, neighborhood restoration projects, feats of black artists and athletes, and local community events could all be found in an issue of the Afro-American. The editorial section argued against Jim Crow machinations, discussed black labor rights, and highlighted education advocacy. The newspaper also gave a voice to aspiring black journalists, like Murphy’s own daughter Elizabeth Murphy Phillips Moss, who became America’s first black female reporter.

Murphy’s children continued the Afro-American’s important work. Fourth generation relatives John J. Oliver, Jr. and Frances M. Draper manage the paper today. It’s been a cornerstone in representing black journalistic voices in their own words and social groups. Media of the time tended to focus only on exceptional members of the black communities. Unless a black person was a celebrity of national renown, they were unlikely to catch the attention of mainstream news publications. The Afro-American was a way for a black child in Baltimore to pick up a newspaper and see stories of citizens and communities that looked like them.

There was a whole culture, a whole way of life that was ignored by American society. It didn’t exist but in the black press.”—Asantewa Boakyewa, an administrator in the Center for Africana Studies, Unboxing History

Preserving Everyday History: A Daunting Task

An institution as large and old as the Afro-American is bound to have a lot of source material stored, but the reality is almost beyond imagination. In 1923 the newspaper’s staff began actively storing every document, photograph, and letter used in the publication.

One approach to digital preservation is to focus solely on material with the highest research and revenue value. This would, in theory, limit the scope of the project to photographs of famous newsmakers and the articles with the most recognizable headlines.

However, such an approach would fly in the face of the Afro-American’s mission. From its inception, the newspaper held the lives and experiences of everyday citizens in high importance. A digital representation of the Afro-American wouldn’t be complete without advertisements, local births and deaths, letters from around town, and images of black people who aren’t already found in the historical canon. Everything was important to the Afro-American, and everything would need to be digitally preserved in order to keep the paper’s rounded picture of its time and community.

Nearly seventy years of bound broadsheets live in the Afro-American’s archives, which takes up seven rooms of the newspaper’s headquarters. Four of those rooms boast floor-to-ceiling shelves of hundreds of archival boxes, containing over 150,000 labeled envelopes stuffed with artifacts. File cabinets encase folders of photographs, each carefully annotated on onion skin pasted to the back of each photo. With no way to find a needed source easily, indexing would require digitization.

Digitizing a collection of this size and composition would prove the Afro-American’s biggest challenge.

Materials that old and delicate (like the onion skin annotations) need to be handled carefully, and the variety of media types meant that care and cost would be required in the effort. Manual digitization wouldn’t be as simple as feeding documents through a scanner. Sorting, categorizing, and deciding on metadata factors for the digital end product requires intense planning—something that’s much harder to do when a collection fills seven entire rooms.

Into The Future

Enter Thomas Smith, a graduate student and young programmer, and his invention, Project Gado. In 2010, Smith worked with the Afro-American to win grant funding for digitization, but even with money, the effort faced a daunting task.

The archives of the Afro-American contained 1.5 million historical photos. When approaching the project, Smith took stock of the collection. In his Medium article about the project, Smith writes, “The standard approach to scanning a commercial archive is to focus on the most valuable 1% to 2% of the collection. Almost invariably, this means capturing images that cover famous people and major events. The everyday, being less profitable, is left out.”

Smith’s vision? Use brand new technology to digitize everything.

He built Project Gado, a scanning robot which, by Smith’s estimation, would shrink scanning time and man hours. Gado works through Python and Arduino coding languages and operates by lightly suctioning photographs and placing them, one by one, on a scanner. Supervised by a human, the robot was able to scan about 120,000 images in the first year.

Additional Challenges & Earning a Profit

A virtual folder of raw image files is just as useful for research or revenue as a folder of photographs, but it can offer superior search capabilities when set up properly. This can save significant time and resources that can be allocated to more important tasks than sifting through boxes.

In order to make the Afro-American’s newly-digitized image collection searchable and sellable, Smith and the digitization team knew they would need to employ metadata. Adding information by hand was one option, but being a technical expert, Smith wanted to try powerful AI tools. In 2010-2012, this kind of technology was still in its earliest days when applied to visual media, so Smith’s team started building what they needed from scratch.

For the text, though, a major tool was Google Vision’s OCR. This tool detects when text appears in a document and then attempts to read it. This is an impressive tool, but has significant limits that can only be mitigated by detailed, human review. Check out the results in the Afro-American Archives.

AI tools created by IBM and trained by Smith’s team were also useful in identifying themes, content, and historical figures. Where the AI fell short was around gender and age. Even in today’s AI, facial recognition is largely ineffective when presented with people of color.

All that time and effort resulted in a product that could be sold to media marketplaces, like Getty Images. Now, licensing these powerful images helps fund the Afro-American’s reporting. These tools also helped move the field of preservation forward and displays just how useful deep learning and AI can be to the future of digitization.

The Impact of Everyday History

Smith pinpoints the incredible impact digitizing everyday black history creates. “That experience—that personal moment of interacting with the past—is a unique engagement with history that the archive offers.” This connection between the modern, everyday person and their counterpart in the past only comes when attention is paid not only to famous figures, but faces in the background. “Digitizing a whole archive (or at least a massive sample of it) affords the opportunity to capture both the iconic, highly profitable images and those that document daily experience,” says Smith.

Today, this wide-spread preservation of all perspectives and identities throughout history is more feasible than even ten years ago when the efforts to digitize the Afro-American began. According to Smith, “Modern scanning tech like the… overhead camera can scan hundreds of images per hour, and sheet-feed scanners today can scan delicate materials without damaging them. For institutions that can afford the tech, there’s no excuse not to digitize everything.”

Digitization of the Afro-American’s archives is ongoing, and presentation of its contents remains in flux, but organizations seeking similar results now have an amazing success story to look to for inspiration.

History’s raw materials, like fossils, are embedded in layers of time. Consider a drawer in your office desk or a hall bureau at home: Its jumbled contents form a visual collage of your recent past. History gets written when somebody sifts through the remains and ponders how all the pieces fit together.”—Bret McCabe, Unboxing History

Our histories, our cultures, and what makes us one human community—these concepts are more than items displayed in museums or on library shelves. Our stories wouldn’t be complete without the everyday lives of the community. The Afro-American’s massive historical collection of journalistic ephemera illustrates a rich history of a side of American life that is often missing from narratives.

Seemingly-ordinary collections are often the truest pictures of history. This ideology is part of Anderson Archival’s mission, just as it powers Project Gado and lives on in the Afro-American’s archives. If you’re ready to make sure that your collection is available for future generations and even for profit-earning, reach out to us today.

Quotables: 5 Benefits of Switching to a Paperless Office—It’s Not Just About Searching (Budget Earth)

October 9, 2020/in Paperless Office, Quotables /by Anderson Archival

Founding Principal Amy Anderson’s post in Budget Earth discusses all things paperless office, the hows, the whys, and the unexpected benefits digitization can offer.

Click here to read the full article!

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

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