Packing Up

On February 23, Atlanta History Center vice president Paul Crater and I began pulling collections from the shelves at the Kenan Research Center to pack and deliver to the Digital Library of Georgia for digitization. The History Center is contributing approximately 35,000 pages of material from seventy-four collections to the project.

To reduce the amount of time collections will be at DLG and thus inaccessible to researchers, the project staff decided to deliver the content in three installments, the first of which occurred on March 19, 2012. To illustrate the volume of materials to be digitized, AHC staff pulled half of the collections set to be digitized for the grant.

Since the collections will be inaccessible to researchers until they are returned to the Atlanta History Center and reshelved in their original containers, inventories and catalog records for these collections have been temporarily removed from our online catalogs.  

For the first installment, we chose forty-six collections, many of which are relatively small in size with only a few documents in each. However, the Wilber Kurtz Jr. visual arts collection contains over 6,000 images to be digitized. We carefully rehoused all the collections in record boxes for the trip and created spreadsheets that include an accurate account of the scans required for the contents of each collection.

Which brings me to an occupational hazard: reading the material with which you are working.

Found in Carrie Berry’s diary on 3 August 1864 (MSS 29f, spelling unchanged):

This was my birthday I was ten years old but I did not hav (sic) a cake times was too hard so I celebrated by ironing I hope by my next birthday we will have peace in our land so I can have a nice dinner

And from the 1864 diary of George J. Johnston, Co. F, 60^th Alabama, Gracie’s Brigade (MSS 187f, spelling unchanged):

Should I be killed in battle or die in hospital be kind enough my dear soldier friend to inform Mrs Mary L McGibbon Opelika, Ala. where my remains may be found And if you saw me fall on the battlefield tell her how I behaved myself in the presence of the enemy.

On the opposite page from the entry listed above, Private Johnston left a note for any Federal soldiers who might have stumbled on his remains:

Pay respect to my body you infernal thievish Yankee scoundrel.  I have someone at home to read this book.

Yes, reading what we're processing does tend to slow things down a tad.  But who can resist taking a peek into the past?  We're very glad to be a part of the process.

Training the student scanners at DLG

From Donnie Summerlin, one of the student supervisors at the DLG and a project team member.
 
"On March 8, 2012 the Digital Library of Georgia began training their student assistants in the process of scanning, naming, and cropping materials received from the Atlanta History Center.

We first taught each student how to properly prepare for handling the materials. This preparation included putting their bags in a locker, washing their hands, covering their work table with fresh paper, and cleaning their scanner to ensure the scans are of the highest quality.

Once their workspace was prepared, we trained the students to properly handle the materials during the scanning process. We felt it important to convey to them the significance of the collections they would be working with and the importance of following best practices to ensure their protection, because the safety of the documents is the most important consideration. We taught them to provide support for the documents when moving them and leave the materials in the order in which they found them. We also stressed the importance of identifying concerns with the documents throughout the process and notifying one of their supervisors to ensure that any problems are handled promptly.

The students also learned how to organize the files created during the digitization process. We taught them how to correctly establish a folder hierarchy and appropriately name the files they place in those folders to ensure that their work is placed in the proper order and context, which in turn will preserve the digital integrity of the collections. As the project continues, we plan to regularly review the process with the students to make certain that their work maintains the standards set forth in the project guidelines."