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My last week at the Virginia Room once again consisted of digitizing materials.  This time it was digitizing the postcard collection.  These postcards are of various locations around Roanoke including the city, Salem, and Mill Mountain.  The collection itself spans over many years and it is easy to see the changes that the area has gone through.  The post card collection itself includes postcards of Smith Mountain Lake, Shawsville, and other places around Roanoke.  These were not digitized because they were not used as often, and there would just too many to digitize at one time.  It is important to digitize this collection because it is one that could be used often as a reference when doing larger research about the area.

The process itself is one I have done many times at the Virginia Room, but it is an important one to go through to get as much information as possible out to the public especially if they cannot make it into the Virginia Room.

The next task I got to preform was entering the data from an index.  The news articles by Raymond Barnes are some of the best reference to the history of the Valley.  Digitizing these articles would be extremely helpful to the people trying to do any kind of research (there is even an article on napkin rings) whether it be about an event or trying to trace one’s genealogy.  Typing all the data from the index into a google doc is time consuming often feels like there is no end in sight.  Barnes covered many different topics and people.  The articles were mostly written in the 1960’s with a few in the late 1950’s and early 1970s.   There are hundreds (I lost count somewhere after the Lewis family) of articles and the process itself has taken the whole week to accomplish.  Once these articles are in the computer it will be easier for people to find the person or event they are looking for.

This past week finally saw an end to the scrapbooks.  After weeks of removing photographs and documents from scrapbooks put together with construction paper and string, I was able to move on with the processing.  The newspaper articles were not going to last in the folders, so my next step was to photocopy them.  Once photocopied, I separated the documents from the photographs.  I numbered the folders in the boxes, and was able to move on to my next project.

My next project involves digitizing a collection of slides from John Creasy, a local artist. These photos include pictures of the effort to clean up Southwest Roanoke in the 1970s.  There are pictures that show people fixing houses that are in disrepair.   The other photos come from various places in the Roanoke Valley.  These other pictures include mountains, views of the city, and places like Smith Mountain Lake.  The process of scanning these pictures is very time consuming.  While scanning the photos, I am also taking an inventory of the pictures.  The purpose of this is that when putting the pictures into the database the descriptions in the inventory will match the scanned photograph in the computer.  Since I can only scan four slides at a time this will defiantly be a part of a project that will take a while.

Through my time working in the Virginia Room, I have become more aware that archival work may not be the most exciting thing, but it is still an important part of public history.  Organizing the documents and photographs, and when appropriate digitizing the material, is important when trying to preserve the history for future people to be able to use.

This week at the Virginia Room my ongoing project of transcribing oral histories has continued.  As I moved on to other histories, I was really able to see how diverse Roanoke was and still is today.  My first oral history was a struggle to say the least.  My second and third oral histories that I have completed this past week gave me very different dialects from my first oral history.  The challenge that this posed seemed to send me back to square one, yet I can also tell that my skills in transcribing are growing.  Likewise, these people have lived very different lives (two African American men and one white woman) and together they tell a broader story of Roanoke specifically during the civil rights movement and after.  A segregated Roanoke is not the story of the city that you usually hear, but I very real one for many.

 

After this I was back to the scrapbooks.  The issues I had last week were the similar to what I had this past week.  Since the actual book itself holds no historical importance and the adhesive only cause more damage to the documents and photos inside, I had to remove them from the scrapbook and what I could of the adhesive.  The adhesive ruins the documents because it eats away at the paper.  Between the adhesive and the now very fragile paper patients is the only thing that get them out of the scrapbook.  There are a few documents that are so faded from the damage of the adhesive that the best way to preserve them would be to scan them and put them into a database.  Eventually, the scrapbooks are put together using staples which is great for the documents.  Removing staples does not case the same kind of damage that adhesive does.

I enjoy getting to handle the materials personally, but I also see the advantages of taking this collection and digitizing them.  Since these scrapbooks begin not far from many people’s memories they may be able to find relatives or even themselves in the documents.  Digitizing this collection is particular good for people that cannot easily make it to the Virginia Room to view them first hand.  Having the material digitized also keeps them from becoming even more damaged.

The Virginia Room at the Roanoke Public Library is the archives for the City of Roanoke.  They collect not only items that pertain to the Roanoke Valley, but the whole state as well.  As an intern, I have a lot of options to see what it really means to work in an archive.

I have spent the past few weeks getting my hands into a few different projects.  For my first project I spent time mostly putting pictures into the digital database.  These pictures were from the Virginia Insurance Rating Bureau.  The pictures date back to 1949 of buildings owned by the city.  Most of the photos are of firehouses or the airport.  Some of these building looked familiar and others not so much. The process of getting these photos online is tedious to say the least.  Once these photos were in the database I was able to move onto the next project.

My next project was to begin transcribing oral histories.  This task is not only tedious, but also (to my surprise) really difficult.  The only oral histories that I have been able to complete these first few weeks have defiantly tested my knowledge of southern colloquialisms.  By doing this particular project I am also learning a lot about Roanoke.  Many of these histories are from people that lived in the northeast section of Roanoke.  The northeast was an African American majority, but now is mostly a parking lot.  Slow and steady is defiantly the way to go for this project.  Hopefully has I go forward these oral histories will become easier.

Giving my transcribing skills a break, I have started another project of deconstructing scrapbooks from the Raleigh Court Elementary School PTA.  There are scrapbooks from the 1960s through to the 1990s.  I am only in the beginning stages of this project, but I can’t wait to see where it takes me.