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.