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Everlasting Ti Amo – Italian Love Letters Preserved

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These days, some might consider letter writing an outdated form of communication or even a lost art.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.

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Digital restoration of a classic

Beyond Image Capture

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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!

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Historical collections need preservation plans

More Than Digital: Building a Preservation Plan

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

What Is a Preservation Plan?

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

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

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

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

Assessment of Your Preservation Needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Help with Your Preservation Plan

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

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

 

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

 

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Capturing these photographs was essential

Who Can You Trust with Your History?

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

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

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

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

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

Four albums filled with family memories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Family Photo with Silvering

Image degradation with silvering

Family Photo Edited to Reduce Silvering

Silvering minimized through editing

Another Family Photo with Silvering

Image degradation with silvering

Photo Edited to Reduce Silvering

Silvering minimized through alternate capture angles

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

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

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

Family Photo

Family Photo

Family Photo


Family Photo

Family Photo


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Digitized Register for Cayuga Asylum

Adopting Digital Preservation for a Legacy of Caring

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cayuga Centers legacy of caring digitized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harriet Tubman appears in the Cayuga Register

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Digitization captured this hidden love note

Love Letters Over Zoom: Connection in the Time of COVID

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digitized letter on thin paper

The letter writer experiments with a typewriter.

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

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

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

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

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

Photo provided by Rosemary Cassie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digitized handwritten letter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

A Tale of Two Explorers

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

Greenland’s Tragic Expedition

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

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

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

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

The Mystery on Mt. Everest

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uncover Your Own Revelations

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

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

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

 

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

 

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Antique Stopwatch

2020: The Time Capsule

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Having Trouble Digitizing Your Collection? Meet Your Solution!

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What does your historical collection look like? Perhaps you have a box of bound manuscripts you’d like preserved for future generations, or maybe you have a library full of historic publications and loose papers that need organizing before you can even think about what the next steps are. The histories humans choose to save and share are vast and varied, and not every approach to digital preservation is going to be the right approach for your collection.

Collections of all shapes and sizes have come through Anderson Archival’s doors over the years. We’ve seen everything from re-processing poorly digitized collections to an oversized map from WWII. Some of our clients had a collection they knew they wanted digitized, but felt overwhelmed trying to start because of all the planning and physical work involved. If you have a bound paper collection that’s been sitting around for a decade and aren’t sure where to start, there are a few options available to you, including the solution of employing professional archivists to take the work out of your hands and get it done right.

Paging Through Paper Collections

Assessing the scope, time allotment, and potential snags beforehand can help your project run smoothly. For those tackling a smaller, loose paper collection, you may find a digitization solution under your own roof. If you own a combination printer/scanner, that may be enough to handle your loose papers. But scanning individual pages using a flatbed scanner is a more time-consuming process than many collectors expect it to be. It requires constant oversight and handling of the materials.

It may be tempting to utilize the auto-feed feature of a scanner for loose materials, but watch out for rips, snags, paper jams, and pages that are stuck together and not digitized. Auto-feeders should never be used for one-of-a-kind or fragile documents.

Collectors rightly expect their materials to be handled with the highest quality care standards when in the custody of a digital archivist.

Scanning bound materials is another matter altogether. Anyone who’s tried to scan a page of a book in a university or library setting knows how difficult it is to capture the entire page in an image—forget about trying to get an exact replica of a page using this method. Page scans will appear crooked, shadowed, blurry, or otherwise obscured by the limitations of a flatbed scanner.

For an accurate capture on a flatbed scanner, bound books would need to be split at the spine, damaging the original in order to capture high quality scans. Pressing books into a flatbed scanner is less risky in terms of damage to the book if the spine is well-bound, but often results in a lower-quality image. Fortunately, there is no need to resort to destructive methods of digitization. Alternate scanning technology is the best solution for collectors who have not digitized for fear of causing damage to their physical materials. You need not compromise the integrity of the original to preserve it.

Cradle Your Collection

A great addition to any digitization setup is a V-cradle scanner, which allows the capture of high-quality images with much less damage to the physical material compared to a traditional flatbed or auto-feeder scanner. A V-cradle scanner allows archivists to fully scan bound materials without splitting the book’s binding or damaging delicate originals.

These scanners, like all technology, vary in specifications and end results. The more elaborate and expensive scanners possess innovative constructions of cameras, lights, mechanical design, and image capture software. Full-spectrum light creates a reliable image that reflects the original exactly.

V-cradle scanners can boast superior image quality, robust software, and modular imaging technology that’s easily adaptable for materials with specific constraints. Any industry-grade scanners should be able to meet FADGI guidelines for quality images. The intuitively-shaped V-cradles come in a variety of sizes with adjustable settings and can support most standard-size books, enabling digitization of many kinds of books depending on the chosen cradle size. For institutions or archival companies who have this type of scanner, the power, specs, and flexibility open the door to a wider variety of project opportunities.

V-cradle scanners can boast superior image quality, robust software, and modular imaging technology that’s easily adaptable for materials with specific constraints.

Compare this system to that of the Afro-American’s Project Gado, which allows the newspaper to employ an efficient digitization process for their overwhelming amount of photographs saved over the years. Of course, a bespoke solution like Project Gado isn’t a feasible option for the individual collector who wants to digitize their bound materials, and neither is permanently damaging an entire collection just to make digital copies on a traditional scanner.

Collection Protection

Collectors rightly expect their materials to be handled with the highest quality care standards when in the custody of a digital archivist. The collections themselves need a safe and confidential storage area, especially for old or delicate materials susceptible to damage from environmental factors. Collectors often know from experience that storing materials in a damp basement or drafty attic will have an effect on paper materials, so an archival storage area free of mold, pests, and light pollution is essential.

Professional archivists have the space and knowledge to keep your collection as safe as possible during every step of the digitization process. They understand the storage needs of paper, which can be volatile depending on age and condition. They’re also trained in handling old or fragile materials, preventing accidents that may occur with less experienced collection custodians.

Investing in the right equipment, hours of organization and scanning, and the education required to process a collection the right way often isn’t feasible for individuals or busy organizations. Digitization professionals come with the right tools for the job. Reaching out for help from a firm with the right resources and know-how takes care of everything.

What does your bound collection need? Let Anderson Archival know how we can help fulfill your vision for your digitized collection! Call 314.259.1900 or complete a free consultation form to introduce your history to our solutions.

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