Digitizing Daguerreotypes
— by Christopher G. Shepard
To conjoin one of the earliest collections of photography with the latest technologies of today, the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Library and the HCL Digital Initiatives Team have completed the task of digitizing 3312 cased photographs from the Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography.
Stephen Sylvester and Robert Zinck
The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography, one of the foremost teaching and research collections in America, is a premier collection of more than 7,000 items — including daguerreotypes, photographic prints, books illustrated with original photographs, early photographic albums, cameras, and manuscripts which document the discovery of photography from the 1830s through the turn of the century. However, the 3312 cased images-daguerreotypes protected by ornate cases, were the materials in the Horblit collection that were digitized.
Stephen Chapman, Preservation Librarian of Digital Projects, explained, "Daguerreotypes present a number of technical challenges to photography, particularly in lighting and color reproduction. Stephen Sylvester and Robert Zinck of HCL Imaging Services not only devised a production technique for lighting the images, but working closely with the staff at Luna Imaging, the scanning contractor in Venice, California, developed a photography guideline for creating color negative film that it is optimized for scanning."
Since the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts daguerreotpye image from Horblit collection had already created individual catalog records of the Horblit Collection in a FileMaker database, the metadata workflow was ultimately defined as a migration of data from FileMaker to OLIVIA, a cataloging system specifically designed for images at Harvard. The digital collection will be made publicly available from VIA, the Visual Information Access catalog. To meet the goal of linking digital images to item-level catalog records, two workflows were developed: one for imaging and one for metadata. Given the choices of imaging technology available during the planning phases of the project, the decision was made to photograph the cased images to 35mm color negative film, then to scan the film to create digital images.
Camera set-up invented for project
"The idea behind the initial photography was to eliminate as many scratches on the silver surface and minimize reflection from the flash," Robert Zinck, Photographer Digital Imaging Services, explained. "The process was to place a black cloth (see image on the left) in front of the mirrored surface."
Once they invented a way to produce high quality color negatives, Zinck and Sylvester spent about 100 hours photographing the 3312 cased images.
Not a lot of time when you consider that the daguerreotypes are fragile, three dimensional, and not easily manipulated.
"We were challenged in several ways with this project," Stephen Sylvester, Photographer Digital Imaging Services Widener Library, said. "We had to consider financial, time and digital parameters. We had a time budget of 3 months."
"This was not our only project at the time. We do outside fine arts photography as well, we are not just limited to Harvard's collections," Sylvester said.
Anne Anninger, Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts, described the digitizing project, "We have given priority to the cased images because of the particular difficulties they present for patrons to handle and view and because of their fragile condition."
Julie Mellby, Assistant Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts, established an efficient way to unpack daguerreotypes and prepare them for photography, a time-consuming process that became more efficient. She was assisted in the effort by Anne Anninger, Brenda Breed, Curatorial Assistant Printing and Graphic Arts, and Jody Benck, Horblit Digitization Project Assistant.
Robin Wendler, Lee Mandell, and Ben Noeske in the Office for Information Systems will manage the transfer of metadata to OLIVIA, noting the challenges and costs of bringing legacy image metadata into new collection management systems.
Harrison D. Horblit, Class of 1933, an amateur collector of rare books on the history of science, began collecting early photographs in the 1960's by purchasing Sir Thomas Phillips, a renowned book and manuscript collector of the 19th century, entire collection. Horblit spent the next 20 years adding to his collection. In 1995, Jean M. Horblit presented the collection to Houghton Library, of the Harvard College Library, in memory of her husband. For the past four years, the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts and Houghton Library have been cataloging, re-housing, and conserving this vast quantity of photographic material.
According to Chapman, this project has proven to be an excellent testbed for digital conversion, allowing participants to document the processes and costs associated with many of the component costs of digital projects: selection and preparation, imaging, metadata migration, quality control, and transfer of data among several systems.
A beautiful illustrated catalogue, authored by Anne Anninger and Julie Mellby, Salts of Silver, Toned with Gold published by the University of Washington and Houghton Library is available.