Developing a long-term and large scale project to digitize photographic negatives

Texas State University received a 2017 TSLAC TexTreasures Grant, funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, to digitize at-risk photographic negatives in the University Archives. For the initial stages of our long-term project we are focusing on the photographic negatives donated by the San Marcos Daily Record to the University Archives in January 2016. The SMDR negative collection includes an estimated 800,000 images and spans approximately 70 years, from the mid-1930s to the 2000s. When combined with the negatives already housed in the University Archives, the number of negatives is estimated at 1.5 million. This presentation will describe the first stages of the project including the on-going development of two custom-built film negative capture stations that are used to digitize negatives and special considerations in the process due to the large scale and long timeline.