Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Orange Countiana returns!

The first issue of the newly-revived Orange Countiana historical journal is finally out, and it's outstanding.
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A couple years ago, I started encouraging the Orange County Historical Society (OCHS) to get back to the business of publishing substantive local history. Thanks to the Society's board and our editor, Phil Brigandi, the long-dormant Orange Countiana was brought back to life -- this time as an annual publication. (The previous five issues were published somewhat randomly over the course of more than 35 years.)
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I'm now on the editorial board -- But honestly, between our great contributors and an excellent editor, there wasn't much for me to tweak. Here are the major articles you'll find inside:
  • Eighty Five Years In the Old Courthouse - Lecil Slaback
  • Albert Barnes Clark: A Pioneer Community Leader - Paul R. Clark
  • The Birth of Orange County - Phil Brigandi
  • Orange County's Meandering Boundary: Coyote Creek - Esther Ridgway Cramer
  • The Long Arms of the Octopus: Southern Pacific Politics in Early Orange County - Stan Oftelie
  • Prohibiton Distills New Business on the South County Coast, Then Depression Pulls the Cork on the Good Life - Doris I. Walker
Some of the contributors will speak and sign journals at the OCHS holiday gathering on Thurs., Dec. 9, 2010, 7:30pm, at Trinity Episcopal Church, 2400 N. Canal St., Orange. The meeting is open to the public and refreshments will be served.
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All OCHS members receive a free copy of Orange Countiana. Additional copies, or copies for non-members are available for $20 each. (Hint: Individual membership in OCHS is $20 a year, so you might just want to join!) If you can't attend the meeting and are not a member, feel free to contact me about purchasing a copy.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Joe McCarthy in Orange County

At last month's OCHS meeting, the folks from the Center For Oral & Public History's MCAS El Toro project mentioned something interesting in passing. Several of their interviewees, (including Maxine Wehry,) remembered Joseph R. McCarthy -- the future Senator and "red hunter" -- as "the base legal officer" at El Toro during WWII. I knew Lee Harvey Oswald had served there as a Marine, but the McCarthy story was new to me.
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McCarthy grew up in rural Wisconsin and earned his law degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee. In 1935 he was admitted to the State Bar, and only four years later was elected as a Circuit Judge in the 10th District.
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In 1942, he volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps, even though being a judge exempted him from the draft. But his judicial position offered him automatic officer status.
As a second lieutenant, he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville. He also flew in bombers as an observer on about 12 missions, and may have served as a tailgunner during a few of those flights. He was in the South Pacific for two tours, from Sept. 1942 to March 1944.
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McCarthy was a Captain by the time he was sent "stateside" in July 1944. According to The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy by James Cross Giblin, sometime in August, "Joe reported to the El Centro Marine Corps Air Station, ...and was soon transferred to the El Toro Marine training base. He knew he would be eligible for another overseas tour of duty early in the new year and decided to try to head off the assignment. He would be up for reelection as a judge in April 1945, and he wanted to get ready for the campaign."
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In other words, he wasn't at El Toro very long.
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He resigned his commission on Dec. 11, 1944 and was home campaigning in Wisconsin by late January. He easily won the judicial election and immediately began planning his 1946 Senate race. From day one, he lied regularly about his military record to further his political career.
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The rest, as they say,...

Sunday, November 28, 2010

"The weather's fine"

I like the fact that there was once a cottage industry selling postcards like this to Southern Californians specifically so they could gloat to their friends back East about our wonderful winter weather. There are subtler versions, but I like the in-your-face approach of this one.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Christmas at MCAS El Toro, 1945

Christmas is now officially just around the corner, and here's a little companion piece to my recent Thanksgiving post. I lifted (and then colorized) the artwork above from the 1945 MCAS El Toro Christmas dinner menu shown below.
From nose art on bombers to mess hall murals to unit logos, a lot of fun artwork -- both professional and amateur -- was generated as part of the war effort. Today I'm sure this menu would have some benign clip art on the front. But in 1945 we got Santa with a lecherous gleam in his eye.
Once again, this menu comes from the collection of CSUF's Center for Oral & Public History. The food selections bear a striking resemblance to the Thanksgiving menu from that same year.
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Does anyone else wonder why the reindeer has a spear sticking out of him? It seems fairly non-jolly and un-festive.

I cleaned up the back panel a bit in Photoshop and it still looks bad. It was damaged by one of those sticky "magnetic" or "magic pages" scrapbooks.
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Folks,... PLEASE don't use those things. However, if you already have family photos and momentos in one of those books, just leave them there for a couple decades until the glue dries up and they fall out. Otherwise, you're likely to damage the contents during the attempt to peel them off the pages.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Thanksgiving at MCAS El Toro, 1945

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I'm posting images of the 1945 Thanksgiving menu from MCAS El Toro. (As always, click on any image to enlarge it.) This menu comes from the collections of CSUF's Center for Oral & Public History. To get an idea of how busy the base was during the war, take a look at how many mess halls were operating!
It looks like they had quite a spread. Hope it tasted as good as it looked on paper.
You'd think it would be harder to have a spirit of thanksgiving during times of war, economic depression and hair-raising governance. But such times have a tendency to focus us -- as individuals and as a country -- and make us appreciate what's most important. And as one colorful Orange County transplant likes to say, "Tough times never last. Tough people do."
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Among the many things I'm thankful for are my family, my friends, and all the tough people (the Marines most definitely included) who will see us through these hard times.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Heritage Museum of O.C., California Heritage Day

Last weekend, I attended California Heritage Day at the Heritage Museum of Orange County in Santa Ana. The event celebrated the anniversary of the signing of the original California Constitution, which was ratified in 1848. As Sharon Brown pointed out, "It was published in both English and Spanish. It guaranteed significant rights to the established Spanish-speaking population. Most of these were withdrawn when the NEW 1879 Constitution replaced it."
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Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the photos I took that day. The image above shows Ernie Perez Tautimes Salas of the Tongva people, performing a traditional blessing during the day's opening ceremony. Below is a fellow dressed as the Franciscan padres did during the Mission era.
I don't think enough people know about the Heritage Museum of Orange County (HMOC). It's an especially great place to take kids -- either individually or whole school classes. While they don't have all these reenactors milling around every day, there is a lot to see and do here. Everything from blacksmith demonstrations to panning for gold.
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But the centerpiece is really the Kellogg House -- home of one of Orange County's first surveyors, Hiram Clay Kellogg and his family. This Victorian gem is now a very hands-on museum, where kids can experience what everyday life was like in California around 1900. They can play the pump organ, churn butter, run a foot-operated washing machine, listen to cylinder records and a Victrola, use a stereopticon, pick oranges, try on period clothing, and much more.
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I know I'm starting to sound like an ad. But I believe in this place and really think it deserves extra attention. I actually worked there as a docent when I was in college, and let's just say that the current management and staff have clearly worked their butts off to improve and enliven the place. Oh, yes... Back to the photos: A couple Californios show off their guns, bear skins, and fancy duds in the image above. Yes, those were real knives they had stuck in their belts (and in their boots), but I wasn't intimidated. As you'll see in the photo below, I was carrying a pick-axe.
Yes, that's me, at the "Falcon Mining Co." claim, getting a jump on "Talk Like A Grizzled Prospector Day."
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I also ran into my friend and fellow OCHS board member, Carolyn Schoff, (shown in the photo below,) who I almost didn't recognize in her Early California attire!
All these photos -- plus images of many other historical events and locations I visit (and a whole lotta other random stuff) -- are posted on my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/traderchris/. Feel free to stop by and visit whenever. Note especially the photo sets marked "Orange County History," "Knott's Berry Farm," "Tiki & Polynesian Pop," and so forth.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Autumn Leaf, Mexican Revolution, Fender, etc.

The image above shows Charles Reynolds moving crates of Autumn Leaf Brand oranges at the Anaheim Cooperative Orange Association, located at 1530-1540 West Lincoln Ave. in Anaheim. The photo was taken in about 1943. The image below shows what the label looked like in color.
There's a good article in the Register today about the Mexican Revolution and how it changed Orange County. Interesting insights are offered by Dagoberto Fuentes and Phil Brigandi.
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I recently stumbled across this 1996 video of MCAS El Toro's Jay W. Hubbard Air Command Museum, shot just before it closed and moved to Mirimar Air Station.
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Fullerton added several buildings to its historical landmarks register, including Leo Fender's Radio Shop, a building tied to the oil industry, a 1920s brick commercial building, and the home of local philanthropist Carrie Earl McFadden Ford.
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Guy Ball just finished his Tustin history book for Arcadia Publishing, and a publication date of Jan. 24th has been set. He also has an article in the current issue of OC Pulse.
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As always, if you have any news or events related to Orange County history, please let me know.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Calico Mine Train Ride, Steampunk and CSUF

The Calico Mine Train Ride at Knott's Berry Farm is turning 50 this month. The O.C. Register has an article detailing how Bud Hurlbut thought up, designed, built, and operated this wonderful attraction. (Also enjoy the video by our pal Mark Eades.) I hope the old mine is around long enough that I'll be able to take my grandchildren there someday.
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I also hear, through the grapevine, that someone at Knott's is now working on the various visual effects inside the ride to bring them back online. Already, rocks are once again tumbling out of the ore chute! I hope the steaming mud pots will be next.
The photo above shows Bud putting the finishing touches on a scene in the ride in 1960. The photo is the only image I've ever seen of Walter and Cordelia Knott on the ride.
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I've posted about this ride at least two times in the past, including early video footage and a great image of the colorful cavern scene. All of these images, including those in today's post and the historic images in the Register's slide show, come from the Knott's Berry Farm Collection, which is now part of the Orange County Archives.
I've been enjoying the "steampunk" phenomenon from afar for a while. Now I read in The Daily Titan that it all began with folks from my alma mater. Link over to read how Cal State Fullerton alumni Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and K.W. Jeter created this "Victorian meets high-tech" alternate universe.
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The article also notes that Powers' book On Stranger Tides has been optioned for the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie -- a franchise that also, of course, has its origins in Orange County.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Veterans Day

Above: A decoration ceremony at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in 1955. Below: President Johnson meets Marines departing MCAS El Toro for Vietnam in Feb. 1968.
Our respect and boundless thanks to our veterans -- Not just today, but every day.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Yorba, Bowers, Calif. Heritage, & Orange Countiana

Here's the famous portrait of Bernardo Yorba (1800-1858) that hangs in the Rancho Room at Bowers Museum. Be sure to visit Bowers before the last of the Orange County history artifacts are tucked away for good. (I hear that day is coming fairly soon.) Pay special attention to the old wing (both upstairs and downstairs), which includes the Rancho Room, an exhibit on local Indians and utterly beautiful decorative ceilings. Also note some of the significant artifacts in the entry courtyard and the great Spanish-themed WPA architecture. Wonderful stuff!
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The Tustin Area Historical Society will meet Nov. 17, at 7pm, in the multi-purpose room at the Tustin Senior Center, 200 South C St. Jim Cortese will portray Bernardo Yorba in “The Passions of the Rancho Period,” a interactive and educational program featuring “storytelling, laughter and song.”
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California Heritage Day will be celebrated Sunday, Nov. 14, from 10am to 4pm at the Heritage Museum of Orange County (a.k.a the Kellogg House). The day marks the signing and ratification of the original California Constitution which took place (actually on Nov. 13,) in 1879. Activities throughout the day will include music of early California with dance demonstrations, Fiesta Grupo Folklorico, oral histories, a blacksmith demo, panning for “gold,”, exhibits, crafts, and more. (Be sure to say hello to the grizzled prospector at the gold mine!) A reenactment of the Constitution signing will be held at 2pm, and descendants of the actual signers will be honored. Admission is free.
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I will be the featured speaker at the Nov. 18th meeting of the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society. I’ll be discussing the Orange County Archives and the resources available there. The meeting will be held at 7pm at the Community Center in the Sports Park at 25925 Camino del Avion.
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One more reason to attend the Orange County Historical Society's meeting Thursday night: The new 2010 Orange Countiana historical journal is now available! OCHS members will each receive a free copy, which they can pick up early by attending the meeting. Copies are available to non-members for $20 each.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Veteran's Day event: MCAS El Toro's history

Join the Orange County Historical Society on Veterans Day for “Reflections from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station Oral History Project.” The meeting will be held Thurs., Nov. 11, 2010, 7:30 to 9pm, at Trinity Episcopal Church, 2400 N. Canal St., Orange.
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Three panelists from CSUF’s Center for Oral & Public History (COPH) will discuss the history of MCAS El Toro and COPH's efforts to collect its history through focused interviews with those who lived and worked there and in the surrounding community.
Leading the panel will be Dr. Natalie Fousekis, Director of COPH, and an Associate Professor of History. She has 15 years experience in oral history, including teaching oral history methodology to undergraduate and graduate students, and directing oral history projects.
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Janet Tanner is a graduate history student at CSUF and the project coordinator for the project.
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Kira A. Gentry is the manager for the project and a CSUF graduate twice, including a master’s degree in history.
The photos of MCAS El Toro in today's post come from the Tom Pulley postcard collection at the Orange County Archives. The image at the top of this post shows a F-4J Phantom II jet landing at El Toro in about 1970. The second photo depicts the station's headquarters building. The third image, immediately above, shows the on-base chapel. And the final postcard, below, is a view of the golf course. Like many large military faclities, MCAS El Toro had most of the features of any small town or community.
Thursday's OCHS program is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served afterward. Hope to see you there!

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Los Rios Street after dark (one hour earlier)

We used our extra hour of darkness this evening to stroll around the oldest continually occupied neighborhood in California -- the Los Rios District in San Juan Capistrano. It's one of those spots that takes on a wonderful vibe after the sun sets. By all means, everyone should explore the area during the day -- But definitely come back to see it again in the evening.
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By the way,... Some of the homes and families along Los Rios Street date back to the 1700s and early 1800s. (And you thought you'd lived here a long time!)
I took these two photos tonight, after dinner at the historic El Adobe Restaurant. The photo at the top of today's post is a small cottage on the Rios family's property. The one below shows the San Juan Capistrano train depot, built in 1894.
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Sorry,... We didn't see a single ghost.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

More on running a small historical archive

An archivist friend of my just wrote with some additional thoughts on running a small collection and useful comments about my previous blog post. I don't think it negates my "quick and dirty" overview, but it presents additional context, detail, and other issues to consider. It definitely seemed worth sharing with everyone:
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"First and foremost: encourage [people] to have a plan, if one doesn't already have one. This strategic plan can include collection priorities, especially those that concern preservation.
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"As of now, there are no environmental 'standards' in the field. As wonderful as it would be to say, 'This is the definitive number,' there isn’t consensus in the profession because there are so many contributing factors that cause an institution or organization to choose what their set point is going to be. However, most professionals would say no higher than 70 degrees F and between 30-50% relative humidity.
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"There are other factors, though, that one needs to consider: most collections (paper, textiles, photographs, magnetic tape, wood) are all hygroscopic, which means that they absorb water, and fluctuations in temperature and humidity can cause tremendous damage to these items. What one is attempting to [do is create] a STABLE environment, that is, a target temperature and RH with little, if any, variation, and then monitoring to make sure it’s maintained. Decisions about temperature and RH really depend on the type of collections one has -- and of course what the organization can manage in terms of cost.
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"Because we know that all of these materials will eventually degrade, decompose, disintegrate, decay, we’re simply trying to slow that down. The Image Permanence Institute has done all kinds of tests to determine what this rate might be given certain climatic conditions. (You can download their preservation calculator from their website). For example, they’ve demonstrated that an item's 'shelf life' can be doubled, simply by lowering the temperature from 72 to 62. This should also be a part of one's decision-making process in terms of deciding where to set your temperature and humidity.
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"In terms of scanning, most places don't have the resources (staff, expertise, or funding) to scan EVERYTHING. Moreover, digitizing, itself, is not a definitive preservation action (i.e., digital files are not particularly stable nor are CDs or DVDs). Digitization allows for 1) using surrogate copies rather than the originals, which does contribute to the "preservation" of the original), but, as you've mentioned, multiple copies can then be stored off-site. In addition, decides need to be made about what to digitize; scanning newspaper articles that can already be found at several other archives or libraries would be a waste of resources.
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"And, the thing about CDs...CDs were/are manufactured as portable storage devices, despite what people have read about a 500 year shelf life. (Additional testing has been done and while one's mileage may vary, how long CDs may last is anywhere from 10-100 years.) Without warning, there can be bit rot or a CD can be defective right out of the box. They're a temporary fix. These days, digital storage is much less expensive than it was even five years ago. Consider external hard drives as a back-up to saving these documents on a local server. Redundancy is important, as is remote storage. In addition, once one goes digital, one is committed in perpetuity to refreshment and migration. There's a much greater probability that obsolescence will be more of an issue than CD one can't read. All one has to do is think about all of those 5.25 floppy disks we all have sitting around without any method of retrieving the data.
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"With regard to scanning best practices, scan documents/images as either PDF/A or .tif files. These are lossless compression formats that captures more data than the more lossy compression found with PDF and .jpgs.
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[Editor's rude interruption: I've also found ways to save images as essentially "lossless" jpgs, which have the advantage of being more accessible to the public. A surprising number of people still have major trouble with tif files.]
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"Lastly, the fire at the Newland House reminds us that we all should be concerned with the threat of loss. Whether it's a security issue or natural disaster, an evaluation of existing plans or writing a new plan helps us better prepare and respond to theft, fire, flood, or earthquake. Much like the state encouraged us to participate in the Great Shakeout last month, we, too, should practice (if only on paper) what our plan of action will be.
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"WESTPAS (Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service) provides disaster assistance (disaster preparedness, response, and recover) as well as free workshops to help institutions prepare disaster plans."
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Regarding this last issue, there is already a plan afoot to create an Orange County Emergency Response Network for archives in our area. It would be something like a mutual assistance organization open to all archives, large and small. Hopefully, I'll get one of the instigators of that program to write something about it for this blog in the near future.

Friday, November 05, 2010

Good stewardship of your historical collection

A fire broke out at the "barn" behind the historic Newland House in Huntington Beach last Saturday. Nobody was injured, and the circa-1980s building itself maintained only a couple thousand dollars worth of damage. But for a while there I was worried about the important and unique collection of local historical materials stored on the second floor.
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Luckily, according to Jerry Person (historian and docent at the site) that material also survived unscathed.
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I'm greatly releived that everything turned out okay, of course. But this incident once again underscores the fragility of historical collections like this that are tucked away all over Orange County.
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In the case of the Huntington Beach Historical Society (which has control of the Newland site), nobody has had real access to the collection for research in over a decade. With no staff or even active members to provide regular access, some materials have simply been loaned out (which may account for crate of early 1900s glass negatives that may have gone missing). But most have simply been locked away in a room with no temperature or humidity controls.
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I point this out not to point fingers at HBHS, but rather to say that this kind of situation isn't as rare as you'd think for small historical collections. In these cases, we're often letting our heritage simply rot away,... If a fire doesn't get to it first.
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But let's assume for a moment that you've been put in charge of a collection like this yourself. What can be done about it?
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First, scan EVERYTHING at high resolution (at least 1200 dpi for photo prints, and much higher for slides and small negatives). Then, burn those scanned images onto archival gold DVDs. Then distribute those DVDs to various places. If something happens to the original photos and documents, you want the copies to be somewhere else -- safe!
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Making digital scans of the documents also means you won't have to handle the originals as much in the future, which also helps extend their lifespan.
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Then, store your original materials in a constantly temperature- and humidity-controlled environment. Use a combination of heating and air conditioning to keep things at a steady 68 degrees. Use humidifiers, dehumidifiers and hygrometers in conjunction with one another to monitor and maintain a low and steady humidity level in the archives. (40% is about ideal.) Doing these things will not only help curtail insects and mold, but will also keep materials from being destroyed by the simple expansion and contraction that comes with changes in humidity or temperature.
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And finally, do your best to make the contents and whereabouts of your collections known to the public (possibly by putting some basic information online) and then try to provide a least some access to those who wish to do research. Even "by appointment only" and very limited hours beat nothing at all.
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Plenty of books and classes and whole college degrees are offered on how to run a historical archive. But the steps listed above seem to me a sort of minimum to shoot for.
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If those steps can't be followed, please at least try to keep historic documents and photos somewhere with fairly low humidity and away from extreme temperature shifts.
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If even this cannot be accomplished, consider making your digital copies and then donating the original materials to a local Archive that has appropriate facilities and which provides access to the public.
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Future generations will thank you.
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[Note: See some additional good comments on this subject in the following post.]