Digitizing Old Letters
Items to Preserve
Letters
Letters are the most personal and intimate historical primary sources. A journalist or literary author writes through a specific lens to serve a cultural purpose. Unlike formalized writing, letters give us insight into individual lives, unfiltered due to their familiarity with the recipient and the rawness of the stories they tell. They can also provide insight into the private side of public figures.
Digitizing old letters can save these cross-sections of history. Whether your collection of letters is part of historical research or a family heirloom, each deserves to be preserved in a way that allows them a longer life of use.
A Digital Letter Collection
The initial steps our archival experts take when digitizing old letters is similar to those of other digital preservation projects. We begin by scanning or photographing the letter, being careful to preserve its original condition. Depending on your needs, we next clean the digital images of any damage, scribbles, and other blemishes.
Our state-of-the-art optical character recognition software has some limitations when it comes to handwritten text. What the software is unable to recognize, our team of seasoned archival experts will transcribe. We pride ourselves on our character-by-character commitment to accuracy. Word-for-word comparisons can be conducted before your digitized collection of letters is complete.
A digital collection of old letters can be kept for private use, or shared with a larger population with a beautiful website, also constructed by Anderson Archival.
