A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
theatlantic.com
A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#2[deleted]
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#3The 400 scrapbooks can be preserved by simply photographing each page with a phone camera.
I've preserved scrapbooks this way - it's simple, fast, cheap, and it works. Yes, you can read all the text in the photos.
Then this photo archive can be put online for researchers and anyone interested.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#4The 400 scrapbooks can be preserved by simply photographing each page with a phone camera. I've preserved scrapbooks this way - it's simple, fast, cheap, and it works. Yes, you can read all the text in the photos. Then this photo archive can be put online for researchers and anyone interested.
preferably with a camera stand and appropriate lighting, in my opinion .....
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#5"....scholars recognize the profound importance of materials such as the Dorsey collection—resources collected and preserved informally by African Americans at a time when white historians claimed that African Americans had no history to speak of."
Imagine how much Black American (descendants of slaves) history has been lost to time because of mindsets like this. Tragic too because they built this country, yet the full extent of their contributions will never be known.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#6The 400 scrapbooks can be preserved by simply photographing each page with a phone camera. I've preserved scrapbooks this way - it's simple, fast, cheap, and it works. Yes, you can read all the text in the photos. Then this photo archive can be put online for researchers and anyone interested.
It sounds like some of the pieces are in rough enough shape that trying to open them without special preparations would cause permanent damage, but it does seem like it's worth doing that for the ones in good enough shape. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#7The 400 scrapbooks can be preserved by simply photographing each page with a phone camera. I've preserved scrapbooks this way - it's simple, fast, cheap, and it works. Yes, you can read all the text in the photos. Then this photo archive can be put online for researchers and anyone interested.
preferably with a camera stand and appropriate lighting, in my opinion .....
In my experience, it's not necessary. Try it yourself and see.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#8"....scholars recognize the profound importance of materials such as the Dorsey collection—resources collected and preserved informally by African Americans at a time when white historians claimed that African Americans had no history to speak of." Imagine how much Black American (descendants of slaves) history has been lost to time because of mindsets like this. Tragic too because they built this country, yet the fu…
Expecting someone else to document one's own history isn't going to work that well. For example, I gathered together the information my family had on my grandfather's experience as a coaler on the yacht Eleanor during its trip around the world in 1895. It's now part of the Slater Museum. (The Eleanor was owned and operated by the Slaters.) They were pretty anxious to get it, as nobody had bothered to document what happened on the ship.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#9The 400 scrapbooks can be preserved by simply photographing each page with a phone camera. I've preserved scrapbooks this way - it's simple, fast, cheap, and it works. Yes, you can read all the text in the photos. Then this photo archive can be put online for researchers and anyone interested.
preferably with a camera stand and appropriate lighting, in my opinion .....
There are some iOS apps which do a great job of automatically finding the edges of the paper, correcting for perspective and creating PDFs.
The one I use also uploads the end result to a cloud service of your choice.
Fragile documents and especially books don't fare well on scanners.
Re: A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life
#10"....scholars recognize the profound importance of materials such as the Dorsey collection—resources collected and preserved informally by African Americans at a time when white historians claimed that African Americans had no history to speak of." Imagine how much Black American (descendants of slaves) history has been lost to time because of mindsets like this. Tragic too because they built this country, yet the fu…
Expecting someone else to document one's own history isn't going to work that well. For example, I gathered together the information my family had on my grandfather's experience as a coaler on the yacht Eleanor during its trip around the world in 1895. It's now part of the Slater Museum. (The Eleanor was owned and operated by the Slaters.) They were pretty anxious to get it, as nobody had bothered to document what ha…
No it won't but I imagine it helps if someone is willing to accept that documentation into its collections.