A website update, Oral History, Photo Digitalization and Farewell...


Information sign outside on the doors of the building
where Irving Archives is located.
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018



Wednesday, July 25

Today, there was a little update that needed to be done to the Irving Archives before getting back to the Oral History interview I was working on.  There was one area that Kevin and I had forgotten to update on the website.  This was in the Processed Collections area and the finding aid for Collection 49 needed to be updated.  Kevin sat by me to make sure that the website behaved and watched me log into the website software account.  I then proceeded to break the hyperlink of Collection 49, locate the Collection 49 document, copy its link and re-hyperlink it to Collection 49.  Kevin asked if we had added Collection 96, the collection that I had been working on, to the Processed Collections area and I scrolled down to double check that it had been.

After updating that one area, I started working on the Oral History interview of Marion Cannon, that I had started the day before.  I was working on transcribing it when Kevin came by and asked if I wanted to work on digitalizing  the reminder of the slides from Accession 9900-140 for there were two more folders left to digitize.  I replied that I would.  Kevin would look through the pages, select the slides and I would put them in the tray to get them ready for scanning.  I asked Kevin why the reflective document mat had to be removed and Kevin replied that since slides are more transparent than photographs the light of the scanner has to go through both sides of the slide.  The reflective document mat blocked the top light and then the slide would not scan correctly and we would get a white area not the image from the slide.   I made sure that the scanner settings were set to Film, Positive Film and that the dpi was doubled for the slides, which was 600 but we used dpi 720.  Once the settings were set, then I clicked on the preview button and saw the tray with the images on the screen.  I selected each individual slide to be scanned and made sure it was scanned into the correct file on the computer.  Just as before we created a folder that was named 9900-140, Box 2, Folder 4 to keep an order for what slides we were scanning for future reference.  We named the slides then added the accession number, box number, folder and page.  Once the slides were scanned and named then Kevin showed me how to save them on the flash drives as a storage back-up.  Once the newly digitized slides were stored on the flash drives, Kevin showed me where they are backed up in the cloud.  I created folders and copied the digitized slides to the cloud.  Once folder 4 was completed, I took my lunch break and when I returned and worked on the Oral History interview of Marion Cannon.

Kevin came by and we finished digitizing the remaining folder in Accession 9900-140, in which there were five folders in total.  Once we were finished digitizing folder five, I saved everything on the flash drives and to the cloud.  We just completed saving the digitalied slides when I realized that my time as an intern at the Irving Archives had come to a close.  I visited with Kevin and Chris some before leaving the Irving Archives for the final time.

Overall, I was glad I got to use a lot of what I learned from my classes in my internship.   I, also, learned some things that I did not know.  I enjoyed my time as an intern and really enjoyed the experience. 

The back-up storage flash drives.
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018.

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