Preservation Priorities: Photographs An archival assessment decision was made to begin the lengthy process of creating descriptive lists and re-housing beginning in part with the photographic materials in the collection. The lists will eventually be part of the future finding aid and perhaps will be included in metadata that will be searchable online. We ascertained that these images, many of the 19th century old town of Hopkinton would be highly popular with patrons, useful for local history research purposes and potentially excellent candidates for a future digitization project to be shared through an online digital library that is part of our library’s network. They include dramatic shots of three major fires in the downtown area where several factory buildings, the Highland Hotel, and Town Hall itself were utterly destroyed while citizens and firefighters helplessly looked on. As part of the larger preservation project, due to limited resources both human and financial, priorities had to be set and specific items or formats of materials will be selected for immediate attention, while others will have to be addressed at a later time. Helen Keller 1893, an original print by U.S. photographer C.M.Bell Probably donated to HPL in 1910 by author Emilie Poulsson Rephotographed by Bill Horsman Photography 2008  Many of the older images are actually copy-photographs of 19th century images that were created in the 1970’s from the original plate glass negatives. Others are original rather than copied and are in postcard format popular at the time of creation, early 1900’s and there are some cartes de visite style 19th century photos. The majority of the photographs have now been removed from acidic enclosures and other types of harmful plastic albums that housed the images, gently peeled when possible from sticky backed album display pages or cut from such pages when removal would have been damaging to the photographs and then placed in protective mylar, ( polyethylene terephthalate) plastic sleeves. Because of the expense of such archival quality sleeves, larger images are housed in individual sleeves, then put into acid-free folders and boxes, smaller images may be grouped together in a large mylar sleeve and then stored in folders within boxes. Digital Reformatting Pros and Cons  Library Preservationists see preservation planning as begins with appraisal; the selection of those items that take on priority for protection in terms of their historical value physical condition, current storage practices or because of use or the potential for use. Our photographic collection probably can be regarded as unique, relevant, and likely to be requested for use by local historians and researchers. It is for such reasons that reformatting to a digital system is a priority for these items prior to doing so with textual materials. It is important to emphasize that digitization as a means to preserve and protect original photograph and other materials contain its own complex issues and whether or not to digitize is a question that introduces its own set of problems. Preservation librarian for The University of Chicago Kathleen Arthur states succinctly.. “ Libraries need to
employ a wide variety of reformatting strategies to meet the demands of
preserving the many types of materials in our collections. Each
reformatting method in use has strengths and weaknesses. Choices have
to be made based on the characteristics of the originals, the
capabilities of each reformatting process, the current and anticipated
needs of the user and cost. Evaluation is key – no one solution can
fit all needs.” (Arthur, K., 2004.) Simply scanning a photograph will not ensure long term availability of that image as digital formats are in a constant state of change as are computer operating and storage systems with which we view such images. It is essential to consider the time and expense involved in a large-scale digitization project as records need to accompany each image; good bibliographic descriptions of the images must be created and the administrative metadata must be organized in a practical manner so that record information can be dispersed, potentially for searching and maintenance of digital facsimiles. |