At any given moment we can connect with the people in our lives in any number of ways. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, text, email – there are more apps and platforms to digitally connect with someone instantly than we have time to list here! Before that though, the easiest way to communicate with a loved one or family member was to write a letter. Schoolchildren wrote letters to learn more proficiency in writing and communication and it was common to have pen pals from other states and countries.
While away at summer camp, the children would write and receive letters to and from home. These letters were collected and saved and preserved in our clients archive. There were also handwritten log books and journals that were written in by many different girls about their experiences at camp. At EverPresent we take the digitizing of documents as seriously as we do photos and videos. We were honored to preserve the day to day happenings of life in a girls summer camp in the early 1900’s.
Can you read the letters after they’ve been digitized?
Absolutely! Letters and documents are given the same treatment as photos, albums and scrapbooks. Each letter, especially if it’s fragile, is handled by a technician wearing white gloves. They are flattened and dusted before being scanned at 600DPI. Once scanned they are uploaded to a computer and optimized by a technician to crop to the dimensions of the letter and boost contrast to enhance readability. This is especially important for fragile documents and thin paper that has writing on both sides.
As the last of the letters were scanned this project was on the verge of being complete. The next phase is our extensive quality control process. Read our final post in this series tomorrow to learn more about our human eye quality checking procedures and the clients final deliverable.
We encourage you to learn more about our Digitize Photos, letter and document scanning.
