SUCCESS STORIES

Tahoe Maritime Foundation provides support to maritime activities, history & education.

Tahoe Maritime Foundation Final Report June 2026

Low Temperature Storage Project Support Project

Period of Performance: June 1, 2025 - May 30, 2025

We are deeply grateful for sustained support from the Tahoe Maritime Foundation’s award of $30,000, given in support of the Mariners’ Access Initiative: Uncovering Hidden Maritime Cultural Heritage (the Project).

Award Description In the Project, The Mariners’ Museum and Park (The Mariners’) proposed to catalog and digitize over 30,000 photographic negatives from seven collections. The collections document the histories of transport via waterway, shipbuilding, the U.S. Navy, and maritime commerce in coastal Virginia, including collections of Edwin Tappan Adney, who documented Indigenous bark canoe traditions, and of Newport News Shipbuilding, which still builds aircraft carriers and submarines. The Mariners’ hired a Project Cataloger to work with Archives and Digital Services teams, in order to assist with appropriate digitization and storage of collections at risk of deterioration. Images from the Project will be available online for the benefit of scholars, students, and the public.

Activities At the time of this report:

● Seven collections were originally identified in 2022 for digitization, due to the aging and degrading condition of the negatives. As of May 2026, 27,645 negatives have been digitized.

● Of those negatives, cataloging is proceeding on schedule, with several thousand existing related records edited and over five hundred new catalog records created to DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) standards, a best practice for archives.

○ Project cataloging criteria: focus on specific collections, entering data and metadata (information about information: types/names of boats, people, places, etc.) into digital records that will eventually be accessible via the internet for public use.

○ Photographs will be attached to records through web links containing folders, rather than attaching each individual photograph file

● In 2025, we rehoused over two thousand negatives to appropriate storage enclosures in preparation for the move of the negatives into cold storage.

● ArchivesSpace, a new CMS (Collections Management System) specifically designed for archival material was selected and implementation will start in fall 2026. The new system will allow us to integrate seamlessly with an existing Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), our financial and project management system (Odoo). We will be able to improve the management and accessibility of digital assets, and thereby streamline collections stewardship and research requests.

● Construction of the cool and cold storage rooms was completed at the end of 2025. Currently, an environmental testing phase is in process in the two rooms. It is critical to ensure each space can consistently hold stable temperature and humidity before collections are rehoused into the new compact shelving and flat file cabinets.

○ Two Arkive cabinets by Asgaard Systems were purchased for housing larger materials in the cool and cold storage rooms. Please see the pictures below.

○ Staff have reoccupied the wing in early 2026, consolidating the both of the Library and Archives teams in the same space.

Challenges Encountered

It truly is critical to conduct regular and thorough collections surveys prior to conducting digitization projects on this scale. We have found, like many museums/libraries/archives across the country, that the processing of legacy collections accessioned decades ago can present their own challenges. Collections can be mixed in boxes and folders, if other photographers contributed to a given collection they need to be researched and identified, and there is always a need to establish and identify clear copyright status of collections. In the digitization of our identified collections, we have added more robust practices than were previously in place for flagging and describing sensitive or graphic materials found in collections (ex: default blank image as preview/thumbnail with a content warning to facilitate conscientious access to sensitive material).

It is also important to be nimble in projects of this size and scope. We have used a combination of current industry standards and best practices to inform our efforts to both digitize and properly catalog complex analog objects for which specific standards do not exist yet. For an example of adaptations we have made, photographer John Frye’s negative story sheets are similar to an image contact sheet, and he has notations and descriptions accompanying the images. We decided to preserve the original order and details set by the creator by capturing each page as a complex / parent object, and at a later date will capture each frame as child objects in their current sequence.

Moving Forward

Staff are digitizing plans, hull cards and photographs from the Chris-Craft collection in the Archives. We have prepared another collection for digitization that documents Coast Guard vessels. We are also preparing to digitize the Edwin Tappan Adney collection of analog materials.

Cataloging will continue at its current pace. After the stability of the low temperature spaces is firmly established, at-risk negatives that have been rehoused will be relocated into those spaces. The collections will be in stable condition, preserved in appropriate temperatures, and the digital versions will be widely available for public research and access. We look forward to how people will connect to their own stories and histories through these amazing collections.

Tahoe Maritime Foundation Final Report

February 24, 2023

We are deeply grateful for the support received from the Tahoe Maritime Foundation. Your contribution allows us to further our mission of “connecting people to the world’s waters and to one another” helping to foster a high level of social capital in our community. Our collections-based, community-focused strategy relies on our ability to provide access to our important collections with stories of our collective maritime cultural heritage.

The purchase of the Zeutschel OS 12002 Large Format Scanner supported a number of activities aimed at providing access to our collections, and can be evaluated in several ways, including:

Increase in the number of hidden collections that are digitized and available for research in a high-quality format.
Supports the creation of content for the Museum, including programming, exhibits, videos, and blogs.
Easily scan large-format materials (prints, maps, charts) to be uploaded into the catalog.
Capture a full page of bound materials, thus allowing researchers access to all the information that resides in the gutters.
Improve efficiency, reducing the demand for the Chief Photographer’s time, thus allowing him to focus his time on those items that cannot be placed on the scanner (3D); allowing more for inputs into the digital catalog.

Installation and testing:

Staff have received training on the equipment, and are working toward greater knowledge acquisition and experimentation with the software.
As a test, we have been scanning the entirety of Operation Neptune, a rare copy of the Allied Command naval operation plans for the World War II D-Day invasion. Once the main pages are completed, the Library and Archival Materials Conservator will stabilize several folded maps included in the volume, which will be scanned after treatment.

Positive impact of the scanner for our stakeholders of Museum staff, researchers, and general Museum patrons:

Ability to produce higher resolution scans of library and archives material that Museum Staff can scan for themselves, without having to wait for the Chief Photographer to add the object to his photography schedule.
Ability to produce higher resolution scans that we can upload to the internal “Collective” database as usable access copies. Items added to the Collective serve as source material for blogs, social media content, articles, programs, and exhibitions.
We have already served a patron during testing phases, by scanning an early 20th century journal and letter written by her great-grandfather during WWI. We have also provided her with PDF copies and advice on preserving this special piece of her family’s legacy.

Challenges encountered:

One challenge so far has been the learning curve with the software. The back end of the system is not as user friendly as we expected, and requires a small level of coding to get the file naming and exporting correct. Once calibrated, users will be able to sit down and select a menu preset for what they’re scanning, and be successful.
We have had to develop an understanding for exactly how to best scan rare books in a way that is safe for each object. Library and Archival Materials Conservator Emilie Duncan and Chief Photographer Brock Switzer have been working together to determine best practice recommendations and develop standard operating procedures.

Projects going forward:

We have several projects planned for the scanner including scanning Chris-Craft ledger pages, Chris-Craft hull cards, and plates from the rare book collection.
- The Mariners’ Library is the repository for the Chris-Craft Boat Company archives, dating from the 1920s to the 1980s. It’s a very popular collection for enthusiasts, with an archivist specifically assigned to its curation. We serve an average of four hundred Chris-Craft patrons per year.

○ The Library holds approximately 5,000 rare books published from the early sixteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Phase 1 for rare book plate scanning has involved our interns, who have been creating descriptive inventory lists of all the plates in rare books.

■ Example records that have been added to the Public Search Catalog, due to scanning on the new equipment, including copies of the inventory lists:

https://catalogs.marinersmuseum.org/object/LB1170 5 volume - 5 inventories attached to record

https://catalogs.marinersmuseum.org/object/LB26035 2 volume - 2 inventories

https://catalogs.marinersmuseum.org/object/LB31695

○ Phase 2 of rare book plate scanning will involve the Chief Photographer and Librarian training Museum staff and interns on

the equipment. The interns will be able to scan the inventoried book plates and add them to the internal Collective.

■ Each Public Search Catalog record will have an updated note that the Library has digitized images of the plates, which are available to researchers upon request.

■ Interns will gain new skills, thereby contributing to their workforce development.

Here's a video about the new large format scanner.

Chief Photographer Brock Switzer trains Volunteer Anne Fairchild as they test the new Book Scanner. Anne is scanning Top Secret documents (released by the National Archives) from Operation Neptune, the Naval component of Operation Overlord (D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, during WWII).