Transcription (a beginning)

How do you move from archive to digital artifact?

Traditionally the process starts in the archive when you find a document that catches your eye. It’s interesting, it sheds new light on an issue in history, and it’s the only copy in the world!! You have to decide what to do with that document.  Nowadays we’re able to use digital cameras in the archive  to take a photograph of the pages that we are interested in.  As you are taking digital photographs, you have to remember what they are of, what their call number is. And so I normally keep an archive log. Sometimes, as in the case of the Linn documents we’ll be working with, the archive agrees to have a set of documents sent out to a professional digitization firm to ensure that the documents are carefully managed and kept organized. [Read more…]