Archival Research

National Archives, Library of Congress, George Meany Memorial Library

 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) & Mandatory Declassification Review (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.