Preserving History

 

Front side of page one

I wrote not long ago about my uncle giving my my great grandfather's World War I photo album of pictures he took during his time in the war. I was loaned the album perhaps a decade plus ago and at that time had scanned the pictures one at a time but always felt that I hadn't done it justice in preserving it because I lost the hand written notes and the general context of the pictures on pages where there are lots of pictures side by side. 

In the years since I had last seen it, it had deteriorated quite a bit and was in danger of just falling into a pile of scraps. It is such a treasure that I just can't allow that to happen so I started researching on how to preserve it. According to the experts, the best way to preserve it is to get it into a stable acid and light free environment and never look at it. They also suggest scanning the all of the pages first to preserve the context of the photos and to allow people to view it as a copy of the original.

So I ordered a binder that can hold the pages, which for your reference are 15 inches wide by 10 inches tall. I also ordered acid and pvc free archival sleeves to hold those pages in the binder. When I get all the pages scanned and into their sleeves in the binder, I will put the whole works in an archival box and store it safely away. My plan is to use an online service to create a book with all the scans that I can use as I wish, perhaps show other interested parties and give some copies to my uncles and other in my family.

That plan all came to a screeching halt when I went to scan the first page and realized my flatbed scanner wasn't big enough. In order to scan the entire thing, I was going to have to scan each page four different times and somehow stitch those images together to form one page. I did a little google research and tried one free program but after a couple hours of fuddling, still couldn't get a satisfactory scan. I think perhaps because it's stitching algorithm was made for panoramic photos and not multiple scanned images. So I tried another and within minutes, it spit out the image above and a few minutes later, the image below. I find both highly satisfactory and at an average of 12 MB per page, I think the resolution will be more than enough to produce a good book later on. The pictures aren't of high resolution being over 100 years old but I definitely don't want to lose any detail. 

I've proven a process now and will just have to spend off hours when it is too hot in the garage or perhaps too cold out this winter to finish scanning all the rest of the pages and get it in a state or preservation. However, it is a labor of love so it is a project I'm looking forward to doing.

Backside of page one

As luck would have it, I was able to scan all the pages during a particularly hot week and after editing them a bit, created an online book of them and ordered two copies which have since arrived. The pages are essentially the same size as the original album though the book is a bit taller in height so there are some white spaces above and below the scanned pages. I also omitted a handful of empty pages so it is somewhat thinner as well. 

I have spent some time flipping through all the pages, digesting what I am seeing in the individual photos but will wait to do some more later during winter. The second copy I hope to give to my uncle as a gift for giving me the original. Perhaps if the website I used, Shutterfly, has a promotion later on, I might order a third copy for my brother.