{"id":2101,"date":"2019-06-21T12:54:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T10:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scancafe.com\/blog\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2022-12-20T05:25:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T10:25:15","slug":"what-we-can-learn-from-the-ny-timess-massive-photo-digitizing-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scancafe.com\/blog\/what-we-can-learn-from-the-ny-timess-massive-photo-digitizing-project","title":{"rendered":"What We Can Learn from the NY Times’s Massive Photo Digitizing Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are like most people, you are likely to have at least a couple of thousand old prints boxed up and stored in an attic or dark closet. That number is high enough to deter most people from getting their old photo scanning project off the ground. Even if they know that they don’t have to tackle it by themselves; that it’s possible – and even advisable – to rope in a reliable professional scanning service<\/a><\/u> to help with the tedious parts.<\/p>\n

But if, like the New York Times, you have something like six million old photos in your archives, then it calls for industrial grade scanning support and strategies to see you through it.<\/p>\n

The old photos were stored in the Times morgue<\/a><\/u>, a giant underground repository of old newspaper clippings, images and books. As the digitizing project got underway, a ten person team worked steadily to get photos out of physical drawers and folders, feed them through heavy duty scanners and then, with some help from Google<\/a><\/u>, catalog and archive them digitally.<\/p>\n

Why was this effort so important to the Times? Like other legacy publishers, the Times decided to take the plunge and digitize its massive image collection when it realized how valuable these photos were as windows into the past.<\/p>\n

As Monica Drake, an editor at the newspaper said<\/a><\/u>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have covered the world for such a long time we just have this vast store of information. The immediate goal is to take advantage of all this material and information we\u2019ve gathered for so long and bring it back to life. <\/em><\/p>\n

One way the Times is doing this is through an archival storytelling project called Past Tense<\/a><\/u><\/em>. Since it was started last year, the Past Tense team has already begun plumbing the Times photo archive for interesting feature stories. These have included recreating photos<\/a><\/u> of iconic New York sites first taken in 1951; an exploration of dance photography<\/a><\/u>, a look at the City during rainy days<\/a><\/u> from the past, and a lot more.<\/p>\n

Many of these photos and the stories behind are now part of the NYT\u2019s archival Instagram page, to give us a dose of both history and nostalgia. Here are a few of our favorites\u2026.<\/p>\n

Scenes of Summer:<\/u> Road trip ready; A resourceful kid in the city; Coney Island fun ride<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Summer has officially begun, which means families across America will be loading up their cars with sleeping bags and beach towels and setting off on adventures. The soundtrack to the season is a chorus of \u201cHow much farther?\u201d and \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d Whether you\u2019re headed to the city or the country, the mountains or the sea, a cherished traditional spot or a destination as-yet-unknown, it\u2019s less about where you and your loved ones are going than how you\u2019re leaving your everyday lives behind, together. This Staten Island family was thrilled to ditch their borough for a pre-Airbnb home-swap on the Canadian border in 1972. \u201cThe description of the house seemed to meet our vacation requirements precisely,\u201d the original caption read. \u201cAn escape to nature with adequate room for our 6 children in an exotic-sounding spot not more than one day\u2019s drive from New York.\u201d Photograph by Dennis Chalkin\/The New York Times (Story by @vvchambers. Link in bio.) #nytimes #nytarchives<\/a><\/p>\n

A post shared by The New York Times Archives<\/a> (@nytarchives) on