Archival Research

National Archives, Library of Congress, NIH Library, FOIA & MDR

 Still photographs

The National Archives contains hundreds of thousands of photographic images in the form of prints, negatives and transparencies. Most of these are available to clients royalty-free.

Prints can be copied using a professional laptop-flatbed scanner combination or photographed using a high-resolution professional camera. Transparency or negative 35 mm film can also be copied using a professional Nikon LS5000 film scanner. 4"x 5" format negatives can also be scanned using a special scanner setup.

While I am searching through images, I can use a smart phone camera to photograph and email samples of these to the client in real time. While such photographs are not designed to be used as a final product, they can be instrumental in rapidly vectoring in on responsive images.

Scanners and cameras:

I use professional scanners and cameras.  If clients need many pages scanned rapidly or need very large records scanned (up to 12"x 17"), I am one of very few researchers at the National Archives who uses the fastest and most accurate professional large format scanner commercially available.  The scanner I use is several times faster than its closest competitor.

I use professional Nikon digital DSLR cameras mainly for records that are too large to scan or records that require authentication.

Outputs:

Digitized high-resolution images can be uploaded to a website or burned to a CD or DVD. In the case that a client wishes to see the images rapidly before they are uploaded or burned to a disc, a lower-resolution website can be quickly published for viewing and picking - once I get home.