Well. This is going to take longer than expected.

I fondly look back on a time where we were guessing the Production Books were only about 50 pages each, that 50 pages would not take long to scan and that this part of the project would be a breeze.  Gee were we wrong.

Our trip to the library this past Thursday night was actually our second day of scanning (yes, we were a little behind schedule and only had the first book done). Determined to keep up with our set goals, we convened at 7:00 PM and decided we would not leave until we got through both 1958 and 1969.  Needless to say, we had our work cut out for us. By the time Mary Haynes and I crawled out of the recesses of the archives around 12:30 AM, the only things we knew were “Preview” “Scan” “Add Page”. What took us so long was the nightmarish discovery that the Production Books actually average around 75-80 pages a piece; I can only thank the heavens we narrowed down to 9 books total instead of getting ambitious.

I will say that the actual books, as opposed to the early years of regulatory folders like 1958 had, went a lot faster. While it seemed like there was more content in them, they were missing all of the miscellaneous receipts and scrap pieces that made up the folders. That being said, I am glad that we were able to deal with a couple of years of the folders so that we could show why the Production Books became the big deal that they are now. Seeing the disorganization and missing pieces of years without the books, it gives us more insight into how the Books became actual books.

Hopefully now that we know what it takes to scan the books, we can plan our course of action from here on much more efficiently. We still have a lot of archive hours ahead of us, but this gave us the solid start that we needed to get our heads in the game.