This post was written by Deborah Tint, digitization project manager for the three-member archival team preparing the IPA Collection for online access.

In July, Baruch began a one-year project, with generous funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York, to digitize treasures from the IPA Collection for widespread scholarly access. We are now well into the process of documenting IPA publications from the key years 1920-1959, a period that saw great changes in the shape of public institutions from the state to the local level.

Capturing images of these multifarious items has presented some interesting challenges. Like shooting the materials — without killing them.

The collection consists of reports, frank assessments of the successes and shortcomings of governmental organizations in a period when institutional oversight was still a revolutionary concept. These reports appear in several forms, from their first iteration as internal documents; to painstakingly typed carbons on onionskin paper, bound together with brass grommets and tied with ribbon; to the later published books.

A sizable number of the carbons may well be the only extant copy and must be recorded. Though remarkably resilient for such thin paper (and 80-year-old paper at that), they still need to be handled with great care for scanning. Because these items cannot be unbound, our faithful flatbed scanner will not do the job. These can only be safely photographed with the help of a dedicated book scanner that holds the book open at a gentle angle that does not strain the binding of the book.

Newly acquired for the IPA project, our Atiz BookDrive Pro came to us in pieces and was assembled in an afternoon by our trusty IT team. Learning the ins and outs of the software took a little longer and we are continually exploring new ways to safely prop up the books.

Once set up and sporting its fitted hood of black fabric to control lighting conditions, this state of the art device looks like it comes from the early days of photography. Our BD Pro carries two Canon EOS Rebel Ti5 cameras on adjustable arms, angled to each shoot one side of the open book. An L-shaped acrylic platen slides down to gently keep the book open and allow the cameras to record the pages.

Later the individual images are cropped and arranged into a book file for long-term storage and public access on the project website which will be created in the coming year. The carbons present some added wrinkles (but no wrinkling the materials please!).

With such flimsy pages, a paper backing sheet needs to be inserted behind every transparent page, and static renders the platen useless, so we fashioned custom binding grips out of foam to support the most fragile books and keep them open for shooting.

The initial stages of setup involved a lot of problem-solving but we are now in the groove and producing hundreds of scans a day towards our goal of rendering 30,000+ pages of IPA materials view-worthy for scholars and researchers by July of 2016.

Stay tuned.