> I have been given the task of transcribing handwritten letters that
> were written between the late 1890's through the 1930's. The
> letters are correspondence between my maternal grandmother, her
> sisters, boyfriends, friends, etc., while she lived in Wisconsin and
> Oregon. They have been placed in the correct 3-ring binder sheaths,
> however, following some of my research, I don't believe they've been
> handled properly throughout the years (i.e., cotton gloves, etc.).
> I'd like to make copies of the originals but have been told before
> that copying them is not safe. However, my recent internet searches
> have resulted in the contrary with suggestion ranging from scanning,
> photo-copying, and even taking pictures of them with a digital
> camera. Does anyone know of a source (National Historial Society or
> some such venue) that may have the end all information on this?
>
> KathyMFisher@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
sorry, no end-all, because each site is interested a slightly
different aspect of document preservation and which aspect takes
precedence is often situational.
Some outfits are more interested in preserving the actual piece of
paper than the content. (as in, no body CARES what's on
1000-year-old piece of paper because what's on it is of lesser
im****tance than the fact that the paper exists at all).
Some are more interested in saving the content than the paper (as
in, the paper on which that photo is printed is falling apart but
it's the ONLY photo we've got of Great-granddaddy, so we've GOT to
find a way to keep the image).
Others have other interests -- there's a group that analyzes the
types of inks, for instance.
While it is true that hi-intensity light of the sort in Xerox
machines and scanners DOES fade the ink, it's also true that once
scanned, it won't matter as much.
Scanning it one time and printing copies from the digital image is
/unlikely/ to ruin a document from that era. Damage it, probably, but
then again, just sitting around in an archival box damaged it worse.
And, of course no one used cotton glove to handle letters! You and I
sure don't don cotton gloves when we open our mail (g), and
back-in-the-day cotton gloves were a lot thicker and stiffer than
you can buy these days (I have some that you prop open and stand up
without sup****t) and handling a sheet of air-mail weight paper with
gloves on was just plain stupid. Handling OLD air-mail weight paper
with gloves on was a sure-fire way to turn it into dust. (You could
use those sheer nylon gloves to pick up or pass around air-mail
letters, though. Nylon gloves are harder to find that good cotton
gloves these days. And no, Nordstrom didn't have my size.)
Pragmatically -- it's your treasure trove and if you want to scan it
in to share with your siblings or cousins, it's your choice. Don't
forget -- your kids or grandkids may not care, and worse may not be
the ones clearing out your stuff when the time comes. There's more
than one sad sad tale of the neighbor-ladies coming in and helfully
dumping all that old trash that no one's looked at in years while
the family is at the funeral home. Or the time a cousin of mine
discovered the great-grand kids pulling old photos out of a stack of
albums and shoving them into the fire...Or the time a friend of mine
was clearing out her parents' house and using white trash bags for
KEEP and black for DUMP, but her son didn't know that, and took ALL
of them when told to carry out the trash -- she wishes she'd taken
the time to haul the family Bible two blocks to the copy machine
before she put it in the bag.
Cheryl
singhals <singhals@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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