Posts Tagged ‘Client Stories: Bound Book and Fragile Media’
176 Year Old Newspaper Fights Slavery; Echos Today’s News
Last August we received a plea via email: “We want a scan of four pages of a fragile 1841 newspaper that is approximately 16 7/8″ x 22 3/4″. I suspect this is too small a job for your company, but I thought I’d try. We are a small museum with a pitifully small budget.” How could we resist? What Jane Rissler, director of the Jefferson County (W Va.) Museum and author of the email, didn’t know is that we keep…
Dear Mother: A Look at WWII Through the Eyes of One Family
Many stories of heroism and national pride are brought back from war. More often than not, the airwaves are filled with the loudest stories: soldiers bravely flying the skies, nurses fighting the needs of their own bodies to save others and great minds working to break enemy codes. The quieter stories of everyday life during wartime are often overlooked, but are just as heroic. Such is the case with the Minker family of Wilmington, Delaware. Their story is one told…
The Cold War in Hotlanta: Crowley and Princeton Discuss Digitization Project at SAA
Last week I traveled to the Society of American Archivists annual conference in Atlanta, Ga to hear Crowley Senior Imaging Specialist, Meghan Wyatt, and Princeton University Library Archivist, Rachel Van Unen, discuss the digitization of Seeley G. Mudd Library’s Cold War manuscripts. In the coming weeks you will be able to hear the discussion for yourself in Crowley’s first podcast. For now, get a taste of the project and the partnership between Crowley Imaging and Princeton University Libraries. Project Origins In…
Medical Minutes Survive the Years with Digitization
Last October, in recognition of American Archives Month, Crowley Imaging collaborated with the Delaware Historical Society (DHS) to digitize “Minutes of the Medical Society of Delaware from May 12, 1789 to December 15, 1847.” Now 227 years old, this medical book was donated to DHS in 1888 by Dr. John P. Wales, a Delaware doctor who, according to DHS Chief Curator Dr. Constance Cooper, “practiced medicine in the Wilmington area for 60 years.” The son of a Senator, he was…
Cecil County Records Aid Research on Black History
February is the month dedicated to honoring the contributions of African Americans to U.S. history, chosen in part to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, an escaped Maryland slave and national leader of the abolitionist movement, and Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th President, under whose term slavery was formally abolished. On the heels of a preservation project on which Crowley Imaging and the Historical Society of Cecil County (Md.) (HSCC) collaborated, we spoke to historian and HSCC board member, Mike…
Going Digital: Sacramental Documents “Transfigured”
As much of the world prepares to celebrate Easter this Sunday, it seems a good week to feature an upcoming digitization project for downtown Baltimore’s Transfiguration Catholic Community: 88 precisely hand-written bound volumes which record the births, communions, confirmations and marriages of three city parishes dating back to 1842. Rev. Augustine Etemma Inwang, MSP (Father Augustine), pastor of the Transfiguration community, notes that the digitization of these registries is an effort to both preserve the records and to increase the…
Speaking Greek in the Service Bureau
When I told my parents I wanted to join a sorority years back (the exact number a closely guarded secret), the response was swift: “Why?” Years later, I have occasion to pose the same question (with far less incredulity) to a few of the Greek letter organizations that have chosen to digitize their correspondence and photo collections with Crowley Imaging. It became quickly apparent that the answer is far more credible than my own had been. As Wikipedia aptly describes,…
Digitizing Decades of German Choral Notes
Crowley Imaging has had the opportunity to work with many remarkable organizations over its 30+ years in business. Not many of those, however, can boast award-winning singing talent. This past summer, we were able to preserve German culture and heritage by working with the Washington Saengerbund to digitize some of their historic records. History of the Saengerbund The Washington Saengerbund [1] is “the oldest German singing society in the Washington [D.C.] area.” Founded in 1851 by a group of young German-American…
Donations Fund Newspaper Archive Scanning Project
Editor’s note: We love when blogs write themselves. In this case, credit goes to Eric Mease of the Historical Society of Cecil County and Maryland’s Cecil Whig, one of the country’s oldest newspapers, for an article published earlier this week. The article featured a newspaper digitization project for which Crowley Imaging performed the scanning. Microfilm images were digitized using the Mekel Technology MACH5 rollfilm scanner and the fragile bound newspapers were scanned using Zeutschel overhead scanners. The archived newspapers dated…
Digitizing the Lawson Love Letters
They saw each other nine times and on the ninth, it was their wedding day. And as odd as it may sound, Audrey Ann Hoffman and William A. (Bill) Lawson were hardly strangers. After 30 months of courtship and 600 typed and handwritten letters, they knew each other so well that what might seem a leap of faith today was just another step forward for the couple that met through the dare of a friend. Mr. and Mrs. Lawson celebrated…