The Work of Digitization

Since April 2020, we at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem have been working on the Uncommon Bonds: Labrador Inuit & Moravian Missions project and we are excited to see the progress that has already been made. I am responsible for digitizing the collection and preparing it to be made available online.

Much of my time is spent working with a Bookeye 4V1A Color Scanner, purchased by the Moravian Archives in 2018. Every page in the collection is captured with the Bookeye and the scanner’s software is used to crop the images as needed and to split two-page spreads into separate images. These  images are then exported as TIFF files, which are widely recognized as a high-quality format that will not degrade over time or with replication. The TIFF files are  then renamed to match a numbering system based on stamps that were applied to the originals in the 1960s. Several copies of the newly created TIFF files are intended  for long term storage and backup, while a separate copy is converted to JPEG files, which are smaller and more practical for posting online. We are now in the process of making these JPEG copies available through our website and transferring a test batch to Memorial University of Newfoundland, where it will be made available on the Digital Archives Initiative.

While the biggest obstacle we have faced so far has certainly been the COVID-19 pandemic, on a smaller scale, we have also encountered issues relating to the numbering system used in the collection. At some point after it left Labrador in 1959, the entire collection was stamped sequentially – i.e. page by page – and we had relied on these numbers to determine the extent of the project and to track our progress. While we know much about the motivations for moving the collection from Labrador and the various people involved in this process (see, in particular, the MissLabr Finding Aid as well as William Whiteley’s article, “The Records of the Moravian Mission in Labrador”), we know little about the decision to number these pages and who, exactly, undertook this momentous task.

Pictured: Sample manuscript page, stamped with the number 041167, as it appears in the MissLabr collection.

As it turned out, there were multiple errors in the numbering: many single pages were not stamped and on many more occasions, two consecutive pages bear the same stamp. In one particularly dramatic case, the numbers from 45100-45999 were omitted entirely, confirmed by a note in the folder containing the original documents. The digits of the stamp roller had likely been incorrectly set after number 45099, and the stamper mistakenly treated it as 45999. As we were able to correct these errors and rename the copies during processing, it did not seriously impact our predictions on the size and scope of the project. What it has shown us, however, is that we should be cautious about relying upon such existing numbering schemes.

I am very happy to have the opportunity to work on this fascinating project, if we are able to visit Labrador after the pandemic I look forward to seeing people make use of the improved access to this valuable resource.

Jonathan Ennis
Digitization Technician, Moravian Archives Bethlehem

Bibliography

Baker, Melvin. “Memorial University’s Role in the Establishment of a Provincial Archive for Newfoundland in 1960.” Newfoundland Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1993, pp. 81-102.

Whiteley, William H. Finding aid of the records of the Labrador Mission Stations (1683) 1764 – 1944 : MissLabr. 1960; revised March 2019.

– – -.“The Records of the Moravian Mission in Labrador.” The American Archivist, vol. 24, no. 4, 1961, pp. 425-430.