Ideal Techniques for Historical Document Preservation
Historical document preservation poses a unique challenge in that it must be handled delicately, with proper equipment and care. Paper documents cannot last forever. With time, paper becomes torn, stained, and damaged. Old documents are not usually kept in the most ideal storage situations, which will lead to more damage. Historians and academics who are looking to preserve history for future generations, frequently struggle when dealing with damaged old documents.
Digital Scanning Rescues Historic Documents
Luckily, historic documents can now be preserved forever with digital scanning, extending the life-span of documents far beyond the limits of their paper origins. InStream is a long-time provider of document archival and restoration solutions. Our preservation clients include libraries, historical societies, and museums, along with countless towns and counties that need old records preserved. Over the years, InStream has preserved countless old maps, books, ledgers, and census records, bringing them into the 21st century and beyond.
We recently tackled a preservation project that involved digitally converting a Justice of the Peace ledger from over a hundred years ago. This fragile, bound book contained historical records from the early 1900s. Quality assurance is essential with these types of jobs, which InStream takes great measures to ensure. Our team of scanning experts had to carefully scan and digitize the pages without harming the book itself. For these special projects, InStream employs a number of special equipment, including special book scanners that are designed to digitally scan historic books without harming the book or binding. Our experts also work hard to improve image quality and readability.
InStream’s Experience With Document Preservation
InStream notably scanned over 400,000 images, dating as far back as 1853, for Buffalo’s historic Forest Lawn cemetery. These delicate images contained genealogy records which included photographs, lot registers, birth and death certificates, and biographies. InStream digitized the images for Forest Lawn, who then indexed the digitized documents and uploaded them to a cemetery software system. These documents are now housed in a new Library and Resource Center where they can be easily accessed and studied.
To learn more about archiving and records management, contact InStream today.
