The Center for Collections & Archives

A preservation expert at the Military Personnel Records archive, in north St. Louis County, is tweeting pictures and details of her job at the National Archives in St Louis, MO.

1. If you don't have a scanner and choose to make copies of old photos/documents with your digital camera, please remember to TURN-OFF the TIME-STAMP. There's nothing worse than WWII photographs with big red dates stamped across them. Also many times the stamp winds up right on top of text, making it very hard to read.

I can airbrush the date OUT, but many times the placement doesn't lend itself to this method. Plus it makes a lot more work for me.

2. When scanning images/documents, make sure to change the resolution/size to a higher setting. I often receive scans which are very difficult to read/view because of their small size. If you can't read it at 100 percent zoom, then neither can anyone else. The more detail, the better! For photos and other images, 600 DPI or above is great. Many thanks to Professor David Ulbrich for that suggestion.

I can easily down-size a scan, so don't worry about that, but it's difficult or impossible to get "more" out of an image, which was scanned at a very low resolution.

Thanks for listening.

Do some hard-core research and read the fine print before you donate your WWII items/collections/memorabilia!

A friend of mine whose father was in my dad's regiment, donated everything in his dad's collection to a certain university. At the time he thought he was doing the right thing. Now he wonders and questions his choice. Why? Because he had shared material with me for use on our website and the documentary, and after re-reading the agreement this month, discovered he had given away all rights to those items, and in essence it was illegal for anyone including himself, to reproduce or share any of it with anyone.

Do you, the veteran, or you the family member, want your cherished items to wind up this way? I should think not! Do you think it's right to have to ask for permission to place your stories or your images, etc., on our website or within a production?

I want you to think long and hard on this subject, and ask a lot of questions and read the fine print before you give away anything. What good does it do if your collection sits in storage at a facility? Do you really want to give up all rights to your material?

Hi,

The Patriot Files located at http://www.patriotfiles.com has begun to archive military websites. This project has been undertaken due to the high number of lost military websites with the closing of several large free hosting services. If you have a military website that you would like to have archived or if you know of one that should be archived before it is lost please contact David at webmaster@patriotfiles.com to arrange to have the site archived. Please pass this along to other military website webmasters and supporters.

 

About The Patriot Files

 

The Patriot Files is a founding member of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project and is a private and donation funded add free website. The Patriot Files has been online for close to 10 years and was built to preserve military history.

 

David

Webmaster

http://www.patriotfiles.com

Preserving Your Family's WWII Treasures

For those of you who don't subscribe (shame on you), I will copy the article when it appears. I know this will be of interest to many on our site.

I'm not a badge collector ....

I'm just looking for ORIGINAL badges from WW 2 .

Why ?

Because I started a program in Belgium and I give speeches and talk about the war in schools .

To keep the memory alive so our youngsters know what happened over 62 years ago , so the next generation won't forget what all those brave soldiers did for us , Belgians .

I am trying to collect all I can get to show the students . I'm not a freaky ww2 collector but I need some ww2 stuff over here to use in class .

It does not matter what I can get because every item I use will tell it's own story .

So If anyone wants to send me an item , please be sure you send me the story too ...

Our teenagers must know what happened and we should keep the memory alive .

I prefer to receive badges but all items are welcome.....If there's a story on it ...

Mystudents are always looking forward to the day ( friday) when I start talking ...

They have the right to know .

So if some of you guys have some militaria to share , please let me know .

Always yours .

Lennon .

I would like to suggest that this Preservation Menu be expanded to include room for more topics. See if this will do.

I have several old WW2 uniforms in my collection that I would like to not only preserve but to freshen up a bit. Some are in great shape and condition. Others are limp from being stored in a foot locker. One is soiled.

I've taken the worst one to a local cleaner and inquired about dry cleaning it. It is made of a gabardine material. He wouldn't touch it. The cleaner was concerned that the seams would rip open after 65 years.

Who do you contact about cleaning an ole uniform?

Is there something I could soak a uniform in to relase the dirt and hand wash it?

What would work for wool uniforms?

Steve

NOTE: One of our forum members recently discovered that the link I had here is no longer functional.

So here's some new ones for everyone:

http://loricase.com/faq.html

http://www.kshs.org/p/preserving-books-documents-and-papers/12261

http://www.preservation.gc.ca/howto/articles/paper_e.asp