Are you kidding?  Here’s what Bernie Madoff’s liquidation trustee Irving Picard had to say: “I expect these claim statistics will change as we continue to review and evaluate them. For example, we are finding that more than one claim may have been clipped together [and] are being broken apart. We have visibility back to 1983, but think we can go back into the late seventies,” he said, adding that microfilm and microfiche are the principal sources of data that are being examined for that period. (Bold letters were added by me for emphasis.  Click here for the full article)

I came across an article from yesterday’s Gainesville (GA) Times that explains, better than anything I’ve read, about the importance of microfilm.  It also talks about how digitization makes information easier to use and provides greater access to the information.  Read the full article here.

This month we celebrate American Archives month, and thus, the importance of archives.  So . . . what is an archive?  Here is one definition: “an archive is a collection of individual publications that are often cataloged or listed and made accessible in some way.  Magazines, journals, and newspapers with Web sites sometimes refer to their back issues as an archive.”  Here is a much simpler one: “An archive is a repository for records of historical value.”

Actually, I like the second definition better than the first.  It defines an archive in a much broader sense.  The biggest “thing” with archives is getting them indexed so you can go to one place, one spreadsheet, one database, search for what you’re looking for, and find where it is located.  With that accomplished, researchers can actually find what they are looking for.

My position gives me the pleasure of being able to work with, among other things, archivists.  The ones I’ve worked with have all been dedicated, devoted, and passionate about what they do.  Of course, I’ve found that same dedication and enthusiasm with librarians, historians and genealogists.  These are amazing people.  They toil away, mostly un-noticed and under-appreciated.  These people are the keepers of our history, our heritage.  Learn more about what archivists do by going to this link for the Society of American Archivists.

Now, thanks to a 4 year project begun in 2005 and spearheaded by the British Library, anyone with a computer (or access to one at their local public library), and an Internet connection, can see this historic work from the comfort of their home.  I took a look at it myself.  Here is what I saw:

Would you look at the quality of the calligraphy!?  Of course, since I can’t read Greek written in Uncial script I’m not sure what I’m looking at.  Then again, I’m not a Bible scholar, either.

But I can certainly appreciate the significance of what we have been presented with.  Christian or not, this is a historical book that has been made available to all for the first time in almost 1,600 years.  I’ll leave it up to the scholars (Biblical and otherwise) to debate the meaning of what is in this book that is not in the current Bible.

What I do see here is the growing significance of digitization.  This project could not have been done using film, primarily because the leaves could not travel, and therefore had to be photographed at four different venues with different equipment!  And because it was done digitally, it could all be brought together, and now we all can see it online.  No travel involved.

Actually, I hope the British Library, upon completion of the project, took these images and put them on computer output microfilm.  Then we have true preservation of these images.

This really is an accomplishment, and I can truly appreciate the amount of work that has gone, and will continue to go, into this project.  Can you imagine being the one who has to decide which pages, out of your entire collection of newspapers on microfilm, are “historically significant”?  For example, I know that the Oklahoma History Center has over 12,000 reels of microfilm for their state, and that covers just newspapers published before 1923!  If you estimate that each reel of microfilm contains approximately 850 images (pages), that amounts to around 10,200,000 newspaper pages.  Each state gets to choose 100,000 pages to be digitized and put on the Chronicling America’s website.

The project provides a grant to each participating state to pay for the digitization.  What a fantastic plus this is for the states.  Not only are budgets in general being cut, but budgets for this type of project are almost non-existent.  To add to the pain, the digitization specifications of the project are very stringent.  Now, the really hard part is, you have to decide which 1% of these pages should be digitized because they are historically significant.  Oh my!

Check out the website for this project.  You will see some great stuff.  Kudos to everyone involved in this project, from the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, and those folks at the state level who are the ones who have to make it happen.

P.S.  Sorry people, I can’t help myself.  I just found out that newspaperARCHIVE.com (who I happen to work for) just passed the two million page mark - for the month of June!

A group of students at Stanford University have a software development company called Terriblyclever Designs.  Their first app was the iStanford,  which includes a university directory, maps, real-time information about school sports, and a course directory.  Cool stuff.  Duke University had them take it a step further with their DukeMobile.  Read more about the DukeMobile app here

Textbooks on tablet computers.  Now digitized images from rare collections on your iPhone.  The age of digital content isn’t coming, folks.  It’s already here!

Read more about this at LibraryJournal.com

OK, maybe I should’ve seen that one coming.  He’s right, of course, about the comfort level of “kids” with electronic devices.  And he’s right about students having to “lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?” Remember the stack of books you had to carry when you were in school?  Not only is a digital device lighter than a textbook, what about the timeliness of the content?  Most current science textbooks still list Pluto as a planet.  Digital content can be updated constantly.

Even though I work with libraries, historical and genealogical societies to get their historical content digitized so it is: a) totally indexed; b) totally text-searchable; and c) available to more people, I still balk at reading a book on an electronic device, such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Digital Book.  I still like the tactile feel of the book in my hand, turning the pages, leaving my bookmark when I’m done reading for the day.

Kind of like reading a newspaper.  I like that ability to visually scan a page (that I am holding in my hands) so I can quickly see which article I want to read.  And yet, I do get a lot of my daily news intake from Google News.  If there’s something I want to keep my eye on, I set up an “Alert”, which then scans for online articles that contain the content I set up in my alert, and voila! I get an email.  I can’t do that with my newspaper.

I gotta tell you a quick story about how great it is to search digitized newspapers.  I searched newspaperarchive.com by just my name - no date, no city, just my name.  I found an article about my band winning a local talent contest, and that we were headed to the state competition.  Because of that article and the triggered memory, I re-connected with two of the members that I haven’t seen in 30 years.  The article was dated October 16, 1967!

Governor Schwarzenneger estimates the state will save $400 million by going with digital textbooks.  What about the environmental impact of not having to print all those textbooks?  Like I said, I guess I should’ve seen this coming.  This is just one more way to make “content” king, to save money, to literally lighten the load our schoolchildren must carry.  There are pros and cons to any solution.  This is one solution I think merits more attention.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, what is the opposite of progress?

Generally it is not a lack of desire on the part of the involved party to get this project accomplished.  Usually it boils down to two things: lack of funding, and a tendency to be overwhelmed with the task.  One of the museums I am working with has over one and a half million photographs that need to be digitized.  That’s a lot of pictures!

Actually, I’m kind of re-visiting an old post of mine today.  That one dealt with how “daunting” it can be to get started on a digitization project.  What got me thinking about this was a personal experience at home.  My computer is a PC, not a Mac.  Those of you who know, understand what I’m saying.  At a certain point in time, a Windows-based computer just gets “dirty”.  It becomes necessary (no, I’m serious here) to wipe your hard drive clean, re-install Windows, then re-install all your programs, shortcuts, address book, documents, favorites . . . the list goes on.  It doesn’t require money, just time.  And if this is something you don’t do on a regular basis (I don’t), it really does take a LOT of time.

Problem is, I’ve been putting this off for almost a year.  It’s one of those things I just lived with.  Well, not any longer.  Last night I sat down at my computer, backed up what I needed to back up, and got started.  While I didn’t complete the job last night, I did get the hard drive re-formatted and ready to receive the installation of Windows.  That process starts tonight.

Don’t wait to start your project because it seems too big.  Don’t wait because you don’t know where to start.  If you’re not sure where or how to start, drop me a line at cswiser@heritagemicrofilm.com.  I’m much better at managing your digital project than I am at my own!

I’ll let you know how the Windows installation process goes.  (happy thoughts, happy thoughts)

Combine this work with our microfilm division, and you have the best of both worlds: archiving (digitization), and preservation (microfilm).  The point of microfilm as a preservation media came home a couple of weeks ago when the unthinkable happened - failure of a server hard drive and failure of the backup.  Many, many images were lost.  But guess what?  We had these images preserved on microfilm, and they were re-digitized and put on a new server within days.  Life is good!

So if you think you have “saved” all your scanned images, whether they were old newspapers, books or documents, don’t be overly confident that all of those digits can be resurrected should they get zapped.  If you can, make sure you have the original document on microfilm.  As I have found out, that microfilm may come in real handy some day.