Posts Tagged ‘Digitization’

Cheers to 40 Years!

On Saturday, February 1st, The Crowley Company (Crowley) marked its 40th anniversary since incorporation. I think our founder, Jerry Crowley, would be quite proud – and perhaps a little surprised – at how the company has evolved over the decades. From a one-man basement operation in Maryland to a 100+-team, three-location international company, the staff and geography are just two indications of the changes we’ve seen over the years. In many respects, technology has advanced over these 40 years in ways only imagined…

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Patrick Hill’s Digitization Playbook

Vince Lombardi. Coach from Cheers. Patrick Hill. What do these people have in common? They’re born to coach a team (or, in the case of Cheers, a bar full of Bostonians. Same thing, right?). In just nine months as Director of Crowley Imaging Services (Crowley), Patrick Hill has utilized his leadership, business and IT experiences to enhance the productivity and profitability of Crowley’s award-winning digitization service bureau. Coming into the fourth quarter of his first year, I sat with Hill…

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From Gunsight Cameras to Microfilm Scanners to Whatever’s Next: Mekel Technology plays on for nearly 50 years

You’re channel surfing and a movie catches your attention. You’ve missed the beginning but you pick up enough to be thoroughly engaged and end up watching the whole thing. Ever happen? That’s a good analogy for my journey with Mekel Technology (Mekel). I’ve worked at The Crowley Company for over a decade and know a fair amount about our Mekel product line, but I missed the beginning. With the advent of Mekel 2.0, the latest iteration of Mekel Technology scanner…

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Presidential Material?

Like many of us, I had a home office that was out of control. Making good on one of my New Year’s resolutions – pretty much a first for me – last week I pulled paper shredder and wastebasket close and got down to it. The goal was to weed out the necessary from the unnecessary, keeping only what I needed for today and for the personal archives I thought might be meaningful to future generations – books, pictures, writings…

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Celebrating American Archives

October is officially American Archives month and we’ve been so busy with the day-to-day of digitizing collections, pairing scanners to end-users and attending trade shows that we find the month quickly escaping. So we’re going to stop, take a breath and celebrate just a few of the American archives and their owners and industries that we’ve had the pleasure to work with over the past twelve months. From a First Lady (Typefaces, Animal Rights and the “It” Girl) to Pro…

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Forever Young: Preserving Oak Hill Cemetery Lot and Stereoscopic Cards through Digitization

Cemeteries have so much more to offer than just an eternal resting place. They provide insight into history, reveal family ties long forgotten, remind us of the importance of “the dash” and inspire future stories. The purpose of a cemetery begins long before death and continues long after. Within the iron gates of Oak Hill Cemetery (OHC) in the nation’s capital, this purpose is being furthered with the digitization of 170 years of history documented on paper, on cards, in…

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Endless Love: Digitizing the Herbst Love Letters

A Tale of Preservation and Family in Honor of National Grandparent’s Day. The letters of Gene and Margaret (Maggie) Herbst have traveled far and wide in the name of love. Through 250 handwritten letters, the couple shared tales of their adolescence, war, happiness and longing. In more recent years, the letters have helped their grandson Eric form a relationship with the grandfather he never met. In celebration of National Grandparent’s Day, The Crowley Company is sharing the story of the cherished…

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What the FADGI %*#&!? (Part One: Understanding Basics)

March Madness may be the talk of the water cooler this week, but we’ve bigger fish to fry in the imaging world (subliminal Lenten reference). One of today’s hottest topics is the evolution of digital imaging standards, which is being prodded into daily conversation by the increasing push to meet FADGI – Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative – compliance. It’s simple. It’s complex. It’s confusing. It’s a work in progress. The good news is that there is increasing recognition – specifically among federal…

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Digitizing The Reporter: Archives of Akron’s Only African American Newspaper Online

Each February, Crowley highlights a digitization project that has bearing on Black History Month. Today we feature the newspaper digitization of The Reporter, which has been documenting the African American community in Akron, Ohio since 1969. Past posts discuss an 1841 edition of the Morning Star, a Freewill Baptist publication that advocated for abolition, the digitized records of The Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane and the research of tax assessment and slave records of Cecil County, Maryland. Each project, including…

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National Parks Preservation (the Digital Version)

October is American Archives Month, a celebration of America’s history and the archivists, organizations and physical buildings that keep them safe and available to the world at large. Each week this month we’ll highlight a facet of how The Crowley Company partners with archivists and historians to help preserve and share American archives.   Last March my husband and I ran away. We flew into Miami, I sweet-talked (badgered?) him into renting a convertible and we followed the sunshine over some of America’s most stunning waterways,…

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