Digitizing Automotive History — Part 3: The Answer to Paper Preservation

This 1961 Ford Starliner illustration is found in the 1961 Ford Deluxe Brochure

If Paper Won’t Meet Preservation Needs — What Will? . . . . Digitization.

What is Digitization? When you think of digitization think about your phone — you take a picture, it becomes “digitized” and then can be uploaded to the Internet, sent to another phone, or loaded on social media.

By digitizing paper records, we are taking a photo of each page combining them into a single document and then placing them on a web server where they can be downloaded or viewed.

If you think of how old-fashioned microfilm used to work, it is a similar approach — that moves the images to a more lasting medium.

• Like microfilm, digitization creates a copy of the paper record.
• Like microfilm, digital capture reduces the image size to save space. For example, one terabyte, now a common computer disc size, can contain 75-million-page images, or approximately 19 million documents.
• Like microfilm the copy precludes damage to the original due to handling.
• Unlike microfilm, the image is computer-based and thus easily transportable — consider images captured on your phone and sent to family members. There is no need for any physical plant (file room) to house the images.