TFI Teaches — Digitizing Documents and Photographs
In anticipation of our upcoming Pop-up Memory Lab at Pen and Brush we are providing digitization tutorials from our staff. We’ll provide guidance on the process, and tips on equipment, and for those who can’t attend our Memory Lab, we’ll give locations of other memory labs across the country.
Ever wondered how archivists go about digitization projects? Here at TFI, we’re committed to bringing archival resources online in the TFI Digital Archive. Through our partnership program, we complete small and large-scale digitization projects that make feminist documentation accessible to all.
In this post, you’ll find a short-and-sweet overview of digitization, but you can head over to TFI’s website for more in-depth information on scoping a digitization project.
Digitization allows you to easily access and share your personal photographs and documents without excessive handling, which can cause damage over time.
In some cases, finding the motivation to start a large-scale personal digitization project can be overwhelming, depending on the size and scope of your collection. Identifying discrete selections can help make this process manageable and can break the project up into concrete phases.
Before you get started, it’s important to remember that:
Original documents and photographs should fit on the surface of the scanner properly, as the scanner lid can crease your documents and can potentially cause damage.
You shouldn’t discard any physical records, as digitized records have their own preservation risks. For example, imaging technology evolves over time and storage media can fail.
Metadata is your friend — be sure to use descriptive naming conventions for your files and identify dates, people, and places in a secondary location, such as a spreadsheet, or embedded in your files.
Digitization at the TFI Memory Lab
TFI's Memory Lab at Pen and Brush aligns our primary goal to increase access to feminist materials and empower individuals to preserve their analog and digital legacies by offering our archival services to the public. If you are interested in starting a personal archiving project and need assistance, an archival consultation at the memory lab may be the place to start.