 We have another live video for you, and this time we are actually kind of behind the scenes in our digital initiatives unit I'm going to ask Carmen B. Croft who is a digital projects librarian to Tell us a little bit about where we are and hopefully we'll get a little chance to see around like so what happens in this Yeah, so this is the DI studio usually the lights are off Because we're doing a lot of color work. We have some professional image processing Monitors and so this is where a digital conversion happens. We've got three flatbed scanners We also have a digital camera stand Here for photographing items from above and a couple of soft boxes that will provide Diffuse light from either side and can be moved around. So currently we are scanning the Irma Voight autobiography And a scrapbook of OU's first professional baseball player. Wow So what we're here today to talk about is a project That we've been diligently that our student workers have been diligently scanning for months it's going to be about a thousand Civil War era letters and diaries mostly letters and We want to go into a bit more depth As to how these were created and how they were used during that time period And so you said there's a lot of students who work here. Yes department. Yes, so how many how many different students currently? There's five we go up to about nine during the school year We have fewer students working longer hours over the summer and this so they're doing scanning and kind of image manipulation but not in manipulation but like image Correction, and then they're also working with the metadata. Yes make it so that yes So the metadata is the description for the images and they're doing Primary source research in order to find out what exactly is being depicted in these images They're also describing them in a manner that would allow them to be represented in a number of different settings without necessarily the context of our digital collections, and so there's a lot of thought and Professional standards that go into that Sounds like a fun job Okay, so tomorrow at three o'clock on the fourth floor of the library There's going to be an event as part of our authors at Alden series But instead of having an author of a book you're going to talk about the authors of the letters So could you just tell us a little bit about why I should say that Stacey Lavender our Special collections librarian is here as well and going to she's also part of this event So if you could just tell us about what that's happening at the event tomorrow And then maybe talk some more about what documents you have here Sure. Yeah, so tomorrow We're going to be talking kind of broadly about letter writing in the 19th century And so we're going to be using some letters from different collections throughout that period and talking about the mechanics of letter writing Who was writing letters and why and then we're going to have the people there? Write letters of their own in the fashion of the time period so we'll have fountain pens And we'll show them how to fold the paper up and turn it over and make its own envelope out of the paper and that sort of thing So we're hoping it'll be really fun really interactive Yeah, we're also going to the Special collections librarian for rare books will also be there with a selection of letter writing manuals of the time period So basically form letters of if you wanted to write a love letter to your sweetheart But didn't know where to start this would set it all out for you if you wanted to write a business letter if you wanted to write to people across various different social stations They were very conscious of strata and modes of address in that time period So how to physically write using a fountain pen with this continuous flow of ink, which was very different from the dip Model of writing with a with a quill pen So that was something that people needed to learn how to do There were a lot of changes happening in this time period people were going from making their own ink at home to buying ink to buying paper the paper itself was changing from From linen rag stock to wood pulp paper. So it's it's a very different Toothiness a different feel of the paper And so people were pretty very uncertain of how to deal with this at the same time They're sending literally billions of letters a year. There's four billion letters in 1890 in 1847 I think it was like 127 million and as that rise happens You also see an exponential explosion in number of post offices and there'll be people employed by the postal service and it and the Price drops precipitously. So yeah, it's it's just a point. It's a huge change facilitated by Increasing education Wealth and people leaving people moving away people spreading out across the country in search of new opportunities Sounds amazing. Did you have to do a lot of research? Actually when when I found out that statistic about how many letters are being sent every year I called Stacey and I said does this sound right? But it is the USPS Historian the the the government archivist for the postal service put out these figures six months ago So I'm pretty sure they're correct. Anybody would know. Yeah Yeah, oh my gosh, so could you tell us about the documents? You have a couple of the things here could we See them as best we can with the the camera So first we've got one of the older letters That was scan at the beginning of this project and as you can see it was initially one piece of paper That was folded up to make its own envelope and you might be able to still see the remnants of the wax the ceiling wax that was used and This is because at this time period A letter was one piece of paper if you tried to send two pieces of paper It was called a double letter and you got charged double if you tried to send it in an envelope That was called a wrapped letter and it was still two pieces of paper So you got charged double again. Is it my weight because eventually it became Weight based at this point. It was paper sheets of paper based and was the pricing system So eventually you got to a point where if your letter weighed less than half an ounce It didn't matter how many pieces of paper it was so that led to thinner and thinner paper being used So that stuff is actually more fragile and less likely to survive In addition, it's also wood pulp, which is more acidic and degrades quicker But so you go from this model To by the time you get into the Civil War in the first when this was 1840. Yes. Yeah And so you get into this is 1862 and the Union has money to burn and they think they're going to be home by Christmas and so they start sending out these Propaganda basically on the letterhead for people for soldiers at the front to send home to their family And you you bought these that you didn't get these for free necessarily, but they were subsidized and so there's some really Perhaps shockingly stringent wording of death to traitors and this is you see a woman in a An American flag dressed tending to a soldier in this one You see the Tree of Liberty and it has all of the abbreviations of the States of the Union and a little poem and it says traitors spare that tree touched not a single bow at youth That sheltered me and I'll protect it now And that didn't last very long like that They stopped having the money to print these and send them out by the thousands And then oh we get a bonus Another one in here and here we have the the Great Naval battle between The Erickson's oh monitor and the Merrimack. So these were the first submarines There's so much going on just these three Documents like you've got history naval history and paper history and have social history. It must be a really good source for Research. Yes. Yes, definitely. Yeah, our Civil War collections in particular I mean it covers a lot of the different battles from a lot of different perspectives We have soldiers of a wide variety of ranks included we have Field surgeons people doing medical work during the war and then we also have everyone back at home talking about their Family life and sicknesses and you know frontier life in Ohio during that time period So it's a really rich collection covers a lot of different topics So yeah, I would love to see a lot of people doing research with these and So the the collection itself isn't live yet. We're getting up on that point. Yeah, that's an important point But once it is live it will be it's fully transcribed. So it's 350,000 words. Wow and It's it's ripe for a lot of different applications I've done some textual analysis myself and you can really see the differences in the the writing style of individuals Like how many words they put in a sentence? How many unique words they're using whether they're using more emotional language Whether you they're using more clinical language, whether they're talking about their relationships or talking about their own feelings It and it's it you know changes throughout time because this goes from 1839 to 1866 So use this particular collection. There's there's several others But so you see that that change as well as people's horizons are expanding So do you have any idea of how we came to have these collections or is that Yeah, so there are about 16 different collections that are going to ultimately Be in our sub or correspondent collection online And it's a wide variety of donors that brought us these letters So it's just depends from case to case and off the top of it I can't remember but a lot of time It's just people that have these collect these collections of letters that have been passed down Yes, and I come to the library and and donate records, but for specific collections, I'm not gonna Okay, yeah, I know it's complicated And so we've in the past we've talked about kind of how these things are preserved Is there anything special with like a letter that you would do to keep it safe and available for future research? I mean for the most part for the moment By and large these civil war letters are in pretty good shape. So we have them in folders Some of the collections, it's you know one letter per folder some of the collections It's like monthly batches of letters in a folder and then we just keep them in our secure stacks that are Climate-controlled so I mean keeping them dry keeping them cool is the best line of defense But other than that we're not doing anything particularly involved preservation wise with these Oh, one other thing you had said that and you'll I imagine you'll talk about this tomorrow The kind of lengths people would go to to conserve paper because it did cost more just another piece of paper Could you like I know you'll talk more about this tomorrow But could you talk about a few of the things someone might have done to conserve paper at this time? So something that we see a lot in this collection is cross-writing especially in the earlier times when it was by page instead of by weight So you would write Like you would normally write horizontally and then you would turn your paper around and write vertically over what you've already written And I've seen even examples will go over a third time on an angle And so yeah, you're trying to parse out Multiple layers of text over each other Or you'll you'll get to the end of your letter you run out of space You go all the way around the outside and then you get back to the first page and turn it upside down and Write in a little gap before you need my dear mom and dad and it's It's it can be pretty intense to try and read them And so those are all you're working on transcribing those even those they've actually already been already done. Oh, wow Yeah, it's really great. So that was a student Actually, I think some were student workers I think some were the previous Person in my prescription the special collections librarian for the manuscripts collections Yeah, I think he did a lot of work transcribing. Yeah, really great and difficult to get all when it's so complex and they're very Difficult to read even for like someone who looks at these kind of letters all day So yeah, I mean I think for the average researcher It'll be really helpful to have them and so transcribes means that you were talking about analysis You can look at like how many words people are using and so they're searchable So if someone's interested in a battle or a place or a family someone could search through the collection Yeah, and we're also putting in Standardized place names into every letter field or every letter's record So that you will be able to see where people were writing from Especially the the people who were serving as they moved around the come around the country So actually, I don't know how much time we have but I have a very affecting little vignette. I so Stacy initially Processed this you know did a lot of work with this collection when she first started here And she's telling me all about it and I knew that one of the The Sun's died of the of the woman who kept these letters and I deliberately didn't look up when I just knew where and as I'm Processing on my end going through it and as I'm putting in these terms that get closer and closer to the place where he died I'm feeling like more and more anxious Yeah, and then I finally get to that letter and it feels like like as I'm reading it You know it's 154 years ago. He he died a long time ago, and he's also dying right now and So he had smallpox And his commanding officer wrote to his mom and said he's going to get better It's going to be fine a month goes by and then one of his compatriots Writes to his mom and said he's dead. It was agonizing. I don't know why he felt the need to go to that detail he's been buried in an unmarked grave and this is the blanket we wrapped him in and There's a grave marker for him in Louisiana But I I don't think that he was ever moved from that unmarked grave And so that that month in between of just like waiting for them to figure it out It was just this Level of engagement and immediacy that I don't think you would necessarily find with a secondary source It's really like people's lives. Yeah, they've you know, it's a long time ago. Wow, right? One last question. I keep thinking of more. So like are there's mostly people who lived around here like other? Athens County specifically the Browns lived in Lee township in Athens County Then the the ones who made it big lived in Athens proper. They were Connected to the Athens messenger. They owned it for a while And a couple of them went on to be like state representatives. Yes elected officials Anything else we should know for tomorrow? No, just come ready ready to write. Okay, and so that's three o'clock tomorrow on the fourth floor Everyone is welcome if you're here in Athens. I'm sure we'll grab some pictures from the event to post it Facebook and Instagram as well as always if you have any more questions just leave them in the comments and I will send them on to the knowledgeable people to answer your questions and Thanks for following us live, and we hope you see you tomorrow