Nearly every museum, historical society, and various other record-keeping entities struggle with how to protect written documents, interviews on film and cassettes, and artifact analyses, just to name a few. Answers lie within the field of advancing technology, which has provided solutions to this debacle. The revolution can be summed up in one word: digitizing.
Why digitize? Well, would you want your documents and objects to be destroyed by the next natural disaster with no other avenue to access them? Of course not! (If you do, then you might be a few bricks short of a chimney). The premise is to allow staff and the public to at least be able to view an object or document online while organizations preserve the originals. If for some reason the originals are destroyed, their spirits will live within our cyber world to enlighten future generations.
Tragically, scores of historical items have been lost to floods, storms, and fires. To quote a scene from FRIENDS (the one where Phoebe wants to give Monica and Chandler an engagement gift): Phoebe: “I just went to my old apartment to get you the cookie recipe and the stupid fire burned it up!” Monica: “No!! Why didn’t you make a copy and keep it in a fireproof box and keep it at least a hundred yards away from the original?” Phoebe:”…Because I’m normal!” A word to the wise, don’t be as oblivious as Phoebe, but do take Monica’s advice, which isn’t completely over the top. Phoebe is right though, a lot of people would never think to preserve and protect by producing copies of an artifact and keeping them in a separate location in case the worst should happen. She deemed herself “normal,” but let’s face it, historians aren’t “normal.” (There are historians driving around with license plate covers that read: “Collecting Dead Relatives….”)
So here is what you need to do:
- Create a designated platform to store digitized artifacts. This can be within your hard drive on your computer, on a website, or through a thousand thumb drives.
- Get access to a quality scanner (like an Epson) and begin scanning and saving all of your documents. Anything that can be scanned should be, especially written documents and pictures.
- Take pictures of every single object (which most historical organizations already do) and upload them to your designated platform. Do not forget to label the pictures. It is a good idea to include all bits of information about each object as well.
- Contract out or DIY digitizing your VHS tapes, cassettes, microfilms, Kodak slides, and whatever else you may have. This could get expensive depending on how you decide to do it; however, it is completely worth doing because of how fragile the materials are on these data storage mediums.
- Type and save (or take pictures of) any catalog, like furniture documentation, that has only been ever seen a writing utensil and a manila folder.
- For anything deemed extremely rare, make a copy (if it is a document) and store it in a different location. (It can be less than a hundred yards away).
- Periodically clean objects and give them new scenery to eliminate any possibility of flammable contamination.
Presto! You are on your way to preserving pieces of tradition, culture, and history. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information. Below are additional sources and interesting reading. Enjoy and keep preserving!