A View to Hugh – Page 45 – Processing the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films

Mass digitization = mass confusion?

The image above (© 2008 Winston-Salem Journal photo/David Rolfe), which shows Stephen at the computer and me (Elizabeth “The Flash” Hull) operating the scanner, is from a recent article in the Winston-Salem Journal (2/17/2008 issue) about our work on the Morton collection (on the article page, scroll down to the “Multimedia” link to view more images, including some of Morton’s that you haven’t yet seen on A View to Hugh). (Note: as of 5/9/2008, the article no longer appears to be available online).

Yes, digitization of the Morton collection has begun . . . sort of. As you may have read in Stephen’s recent post, students from the digital libraries class are hard at work scanning black-and-white sheet film negatives—about 60 scans and counting so far—and the Library’s Digital Production Center should start on other parts of the collection soon.

This way of doing things—scanning the collection in the middle of archival processing, rather than after it’s finished—is somewhat unorthodox and presents a number of challenges, especially in terms of how to maintain control over 1) the physical items in the collection (the actual negatives, prints, etc.), 2) the electronic versions we’re creating, and 3) the relationships between them.

We feel strongly about using this method, however, for a few reasons. The first, of most immediate importance to me, is that scanning will actually help me process the collection. I don’t know if you’ve ever sorted through a chaotic pile of 50,000 unlabeled negatives before (I’m guessing not), but for even the most seasoned negative-reader, it can be hard to tell what you’re looking at. Having positive versions in an electronic format will be incredibly useful for categorizing and identification.

The second reason we want to do “mass digitization” of the Morton collection is so that we can make as much of it available as quickly as possible. This fits with a growing trend in the library/archives community, as shown by the report Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the Flow published by Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). (This report was inspired by an all-day program entitled “Digitization Matters: Breaking Through the Barriers—Scaling Up Digitization of Special Collections,” attended by Stephen, at the Society of American Archivists annual meeting last August. Stephen’s series “200,000 slides” on this blog stems from ideas presented at that program).

The Shifting Gears report challenges libraries and archives to shift the focus of digitization away from “boutique” projects that either highlight marquee collections or “cherry-pick” from collections, scanning images at a very high resolution, describing them in great detail, and leaving the bulk of the archival holdings on the shelf where only in-person visitors can see them. Increasingly, the consensus is that we should be moving towards methods that emphasize access over preservation, aim for quantity over quality, and that let the user decide which “cherries” s/he wants to pick.

If this all sounds confusing, that’s because it is! We’re figuring it out as we go along. Ideas, advice, sympathy, encouragement, etc. are welcome as always.

"A View to Hugh" wins Web award

We’re immensely pleased to announce that A View to Hugh was named “Best Use of Web 2.0 Technologies” in the first annual Best Archives on the Web awards. The awards are hosted by the widely-read and always excellent blog ArchivesNext, which focuses on the future of archives—especially archival institutions’ use of emerging technologies. If so inclined, you may read the judges’ rationale for selecting our blog as the winner (over such venerable institutions as the Library of Congress!).
Kudos should go to ArchivesNext for highlighting new and exciting projects like ours . . . but they should also go to YOU, the readers of A View to Hugh, who have participated so usefully and enthusiastically since we launched this blog a mere 4 months ago. Please continue to read, question, and comment—your knowledge, opinions and anecdotes are invaluable as we continue to experiment with new ways of working with the “old stuff” of archives.

Happy Birthday to Hugh

In honor of what would have been Hugh Morton’s 87th birthday today, I decided to share this set of self-portraits I recently stumbled upon—the only images in the collection I can remember seeing that are both of and by Morton. I love how they capture multiple sides of his personality—the fun, happy Hugh on top, and the Hugh on the bottom that you probably don’t want to mess with.
Dating probably from the late 1930s, these negatives are a somewhat unusual format: a non-perforated roll film with an image area measuring 1 1/4-inch by 1 1/2-inch (or 30 x 40mm). Most of the negatives of this format in the collection are deteriorating such that the film has turned blue, with blue splotches throughout.
Some quick research had led me to think that this might be film for a Kodak 35, the first 35mm camera made by Kodak. Since Morton so conveniently included his camera in the shots, we have more evidence to draw from. Unfortunately, these shots are largely out of focus, and while the camera looks pretty similar to the Kodak 35, it doesn’t look exactly like any of the models I can find online (specifically, the silver plate with squared corners behind the lens doesn’t look right). And, of course, the film size isn’t right either; the only film format I can find that meets the 30 x 40mm dimension requirement is 127. Could this be a half-frame 127 camera?
To further complicate matters, I see in David Horvath’s extremely useful Acetate Negative Survey that, “In Agfa/Ansco products, a blue anti-halation dye which was converted to a luco base during processing was used. It is generally colorless but is turned blue again by the action of mold or acids. Many degraded Agfa/Ansco negatives exhibit this distinctive blue color.” So, this leads me to wonder if this is an early Agfa/Ansco camera—but again, I can’t find any matching models online, and the film maker and the camera maker don’t have to be the same.
As usual, I’ve gotten way more wrapped up in this than I intended to. Any insight from you vintage camera buffs, or from other archivists who may have seen this format before?

"Of fine nose and beautiful voice"

A bell went off in my head when I read Eileen McGrath’s February 11 post on our sister blog, North Carolina Miscellany, about the official North Carolina State Dog, the Plott Hound. Evidently 2008 is the first year the breed has been admitted to compete in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. A Newsday article provides some hound background: “Developed in the mountains of North Carolina by two German brothers who lent the breed their name, this big-game hunter was bred for baying boar and treeing bear. A true hunting hound, the Plott has a striking brindle coat, and is known for being intelligent, tenacious—and vocal.”

Strangely, Hugh Morton was known for those very same qualities (aside from the brindle coat). Seeing as how the Plott is the official NC hound, the only breed known to have originated in the state, and hails from the mountains, you might guess that Morton would have photographed it . . . And, you would be right.

This gorgeous image is from a set of negatives labeled “Plott Hounds— Lake Waccamaw Bear Hunt.” My guess is they date from the late 1940s or early 1950s; the man is unidentified. Please let us know if anyone can provide additional context.

The hound group competed on Tuesday at Westminster, and I regret to report that the top prize went to an upstart beagle named Uno, who then went on to become the first beagle to win best in show. (The Plott didn’t even place). I guess recognition for this magnificent NC hound will come in stages.

That's serendipity for you

I am fond of serendipity—rooted, perhaps, in the photographer part of me. Most of my personal photography comes from exploration, not from preconceptions. Serendipity is not, however, aimless wondering. You have to be “tuned in” to what may present itself.

Last Friday was the first day we had students from the School of Information and Library Sciences (SILS) digital library class here to scan negatives. For the material to be scanned, Elizabeth and I selected in advance Hugh Morton’s negatives made during his years as a student at UNC. We thought as students themselves they’d have some connection to the images, and it would give us a glimpse into student life on campus in the pre- and early World War II era.
While setting up the workspace on Friday morning, I wanted to walk through the work flow in preparation for the students arrival. I picked out a negative—the image above—that looked too challenging for them to scan right off the bat because the faces and lighter clothing were overexposed. Scanning it gave me some fits, so I decided to try again later. I did, however, recognize on the cover of a Daily Tar Heel newspaper (held by a woman who may be Olive Consecu, secretarial staff member of the student publication The Carolina Magazine) a scene similar to a Hugh Morton negative that I had scanned months earlier while “rummaging” (see below).

At the end of the day, I launched back into rescanning the negative. With a better scan in hand, I zoomed into the image to see if I could read the issue date, but all I could discern was that the month had a short name, presumably “May,” and that, with the exercising trainees in naval uniforms, it was likely after 7 December 1941. Then, without thought, I recognized that the picture to the left, on the back page, was another Morton negative that I had scanned during that same rummaging phase.

So off I went to the bound volumes of the DTH. At first I could not find the issue. The newsprint is very fragile, so I was carefully handling only the tops of the pages, looking for the full-bleed printed image. Every page was columnar. For each publication volume, however, there are three bound sets. One of the three bound sets was extremely fragile and detached from the spine . . . .
Bound volume of The Daily Tar Heel, 1941-1942 (volume 50)
While gingerly turning pages . . . Voila! I uncovered a special edition smaller than the regular daily issues.

Entitled Your University—Servant of the State, the issue’s twenty pages feature UNC’s shifting roles within the war effort. As then DTH editor Orville Campbell stated, “This is your University. Those who run it for you know that you want them to do everything possible to prepare the youth of this state and nation for service. To that end they are working. We who are students feel that the story of how your University serves the state, the nation, and you needs to be told. To that end The Daily Tar Heel, the students’ newspaper, is publishing this special edition.”
The newspaper credits Hugh Morton, student photographer, for the cover photograph of “NROTC boys going though some physical arm conditioning exercises.” So while the negative above is not the same image as the photograph on the cover, both were very likely shot at the same scene.

A quick examination of the negatives we set aside for the SILS project revealed more images similar to those that appeared in the DTH special edition. Yesterday’s group of students scanned a negative of Sir Gerald Campbell, then British Consul General to the United States, surrounded by eager students (see above). Again it is not the same image as the one published.

The caption for the photograph on the back page of the special edition (pictured above) begins, “Penny and pound wise is Dan Martin, self-help senior who this year started a cooperative movement for the budget boys. . . .” Martin was an instrumental player in the first cooperative living project at UNC. He was one of a group of students who moved into a house on Mallett Street in an effort to “fight down rising costs of living.” A scan from a negative with Martin in a very slightly different pose follows.

To wrap things up, let’s go back to the negative that started all this. Note the “LET’S TALK CAROLINA” button worn by the fellow on the far right (detail below).

The front page of the regular May 10th edition of the DTH features an editorial, “Talk Carolina,” by Orville Campbell that described the university, confronting dropping enrollment for the fall in the face of war, as being “on the threshold of institutional pathopsychoneurosis.” He continued, “We are the doctors, the cure-all smart boys, if you will, that can change it to an electric magic portal.” Calling upon UNC’s 3,500 students to be salesmen for the university, he proclaimed “That war means clamps for Carolina if we don’t let our friends and their friends in on what we know about it.” The following day, the DTH reported that several campus organizations had rallied behind the idea and that buttons had been ordered for sale at cost. Roland B. Parker, Dean of Men, bought the first button on May 18th.
A trove of information serendipitously discovered . . . just because a negative looked to be a bit too challenging to scan!

Duke versus UNC Basketball

I couldn’t let today go by without posting this image, A color slide made during a Duke—UNC basketball game circa 1957. Without time to research it today, I ask you: what game is it?
UPDATE 7 February 2008
Here’s a cropped detail to help with identifying the players:

Who Am I?—Jazz Edition

In Stephen’s post from last November 6, New Orleans, 1945, he mentioned a set of big band photos (featuring Benny Goodman) that Morton took sometime in/around his college years. Having sorted through most of the negatives at least once, I’ve been wondering where the heck those big band photos were . . . until last Thursday, when I found at least some of them, in an envelope labeled “Orchestras” and smushed in the bottom of a particularly dirty, messy box of film. [Editor’s Note: You may not find “smush” in your dictionary, but a Google search found 384,000 references in 0.07 seconds and a jazz piece must be hep—even if the word goes back to the early 19th century.]

None of the “Orchestras” photos are labeled, however, and my knowledge of jazz history is severely limited. I was able to identify Goodman (above) thanks to the clarinet, the big “G,” and—duh—the fact that Morton photographed a poster for the event that touts the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s “First Time on Any Washington Stage”:

The strip of images below proved a little more tricky, but not much. When I zoomed in on the kick drum, I was able to read this inscription: “‘To The Bobcats—Jeff Keate.” A bit of Googling revealed that Jeff Keate was a cartoonist, and the Bobcats (or Bob Cats) were a Dixieland group made up of members from the Bob Crosby (brother of Bing Crosby) Orchestra. This information led me to identify Ray Bauduc on drums and Bob Haggart on bass, and to discover that Bauduc and Haggart wrote two big hits in the late 1930s: “South Rampart Street Parade,” and “Big Noise from Winnetka” (a bass and drums duet, which they were probably performing when Morton took these very photos). Thanks to YouTube, you can watch a fully orchestrated 1943 performance of the song! (Keep an eye out for that kick drum, and stay tuned for the Haggart/Bauduc solo in the middle). [OK, another Editor’s Note: you just have to check out the YouTube clip!]

Unidentified jazz drummer and upright bassist, circa late 1930s-early 1940s

Unfortunately, such helpful visual clues are few and far between. So, I decided to make this the inaugural post in a series I am inventively titling “Who Am I?” I picked out a few of Morton’s jazz photos, and am hoping to enlist readers’ help in identifying some of the musicians pictured below. I’m not sure if these were groups/artists that played in North Carolina (e.g., at UNC-Chapel Hill), or if Morton traveled to see them (as he did Goodman in Washington DC). I have no idea if these are big name players or unknown locals, but I am fairly certain that they were taken in the 1940s or early 1950s. Any ideas?

UPDATE, 3/3/08: Here are two more photos that may shed additional light on the Jo Jones/Herschel Evans/Count Basie Orchestra possibility. The first image below was taken at the same event as the saxophonist image above (looks like a house party of some kind), and shows some of the other players. The second image below was taken at the same event as the image above with the drummer (Jones?) sitting behind his kit. (This event appears to be in an auditorium).

200,000 slides, part 4

When faced with a problem for which the solution cannot be reached with the resources on-hand, there are two options: outsource the job or acquire the necessary resources to do it yourself. Ah . . . the makings of today’s (long) blog post!

There aren’t too many places “out there” that can scan vast quantities of slides. One company I know that does is a vendor I met a few years ago at a professional conference. I called them to see what services they could provide for scanning 200,000 slides. We talked through the project in the largest and broadest sense. They kindly agreed to investigate what such an undertaking might cost in a non-binding estimate. We sought price estimates based upon two parameters: scans measuring 3,000 and 4,000 pixels “on the long side.” When archivists talk about the number of pixels on the long side, we are addressing the quality of the scan necessary to met a certain standard. So we need to digress for a bit to explain those standards.

Both the 3,000 and 4,000 figures appear in the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) report, Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Masters for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files—Raster Images. We turned to this document a few years ago when trying to determine the level of quality we wanted to attain for the scans we provide to researchers who request reproductions from original material in the photographic archives. So before we proceed, a sidebar is needed in order to explain two important terms in NARA’s mouthful of a title: “production masters” and “raster images.”

At the risk of over-simplification—more details on this topic can be found readily on the Web—a raster image is one that has been created by scanning an analog image from side to side, top to bottom and then representing the image as rows of dots. With computer monitors, those dots are pixels (“picture elements”) and the number of those pixels per line relates to image resolution: the more pixels that represent the image, the higher its resolution.

“Production master” is a term used by NARA to describe raster image files “used for the creation of additional derivative files for distribution and/or display via a monitor and for reproduction purposes via hardcopy output at a range of sizes using a variety of printing devices.” In short, files meant to be used for access and reproduction. The important inherent distinction this definition makes is that the files are not “preservation masters.” Preservation masters are image files serving as surrogates meant to replace the original item.

Warning: math ahead!
The NARA guidelines for 35mm recommends 4,000 pixels across the longest dimension of the negative or slide, with 3,000 pixels as its “Alternative Minimum.” A 35mm negative is approximately 1 7/16 inches long, so 4,000 pixels divided by 1.4375 inches equals 2783 pixels per inch (ppi); lowered to 3,000 pixels, the ppi drops to 2,087. So using round figures, a production master from a 35mm negative or slide should have a resolution of 2,800 ppi, but no less than 2,100 ppi. By comparison, the Nikon Coolscan, which scans at 4,000 pixels per inch, produces scans in the neighborhood of 5,750 pixels on the long dimension.

But why is 4,000 pixels the benchmark? Well, I’ll spare you a double dose of math and say that 2,800 ppi resolution produces a good quality 8 x 10-inch inkjet print. The 8 x 10-inch photographic print was the de facto standard used by publishers before the digital imaging age, and NARA designed their guidelines to meet that equivalency.

(End of side bar).

The vendor estimated that their throughput at the 3,000-pixels specification, based upon prior experience, would be 125 scans per hour. That would be 5,000 slides a week or 200,000 slides in 40 weeks. Now that is a workable time frame! The cost, however, was not workable despite having significant funding available. Their charge was very reasonable per item, but the cost still came in at six figures—not too surprising, in retrospect, when you have 200,000 items. In summary, outsourcing a slide scanning project may be better suited to collections that are sizable but not nearly with the magnitude of Morton, or to institutions that do not have a viable, in fact burgeoning, digital library operation in place such as the UNC Library.

A question emerged in these deliberations. What equipment does that vendor have on-hand that enables it to achieve that level of throughput? They utilize Kodak’s Professional HR 500 film scanners paired with Halse slide carriers. Kodak made three industrial-level scanners for the professional photo lab marketplace. The HR 500 and its successor the HR 500 Plus handle roll film up to the 120 format (2 1/4 inches wide). Their sibling, the HR Universal, handles both roll films and sheet film up to 4 x 5 inches. The Halse carrier is designed to load slides into the scanner using the common Kodak Carousel slide tray that holds 80 slides.

The catch? (Isn’t there always something?!?!) Kodak discontinued manufacture of the scanners in October 2005 because, in their words, “with the decline in film capture, Pro Labs, in general, now have sufficient high-resolution productive scanning capacity.” In other words, professional photographers who used to shoot slides and color transparencies and then have them scanned by pro labs are now shooting all digital. Photographic archives, where many of those slides and negatives have or will end up, do not constitute a large enough market to warrant their continued production.

So, now what?

Some Web searching fortunately led to an alternative source—there is a market for used professional machines and a broker who focuses on finding new homes for unwanted HR scanners. One buyer was Yale University’s ITS Media Services unit. An email to Joseph Szaszfai, manager of Photographic and Digital Imaging Services, and an ensuing phone conversation yielded very positive information with kudos such as, “There’s nothing equal to it.” Using two scanners, Yale generates 80 30MB files per hour per machine. At Yale’s production rate, 200,000 slides could be completed in 62.5 weeks. Again, impressive throughput. So impressive that we are looking to get one!

Building the Morton digital library (with a little help)

One of the best aspects of working in an academic library/archive is the proximity of and access to students. For one, you can hire them to help with some of the more tedious and repetitive aspects of archival processing! But more importantly, they get on-campus access to valuable hands-on learning opportunities—and you get the benefit of their technological skills and expertise, not to mention the energy and fresh perspective they bring to projects.
Luckily, UNC-Chapel Hill boasts one of the top graduate schools of Information and Library Science in the country (currently tied for #1 in the U.S. News and World Report!). This is especially good news for us at “A View to Hugh,” because we’ll be working this semester with UNC SILS professor Jeffrey Pomerantz and the members of his Digital Libraries class (a few of which are pictured above) to begin developing an online presence for the Hugh Morton collection. Our (overly ambitious?) goal is to have a prototype up and running by the end of the semester.
The class has met a few times and have already split themselves into nine intimidating-sounding working groups: Project Management, System Administration, Digitization, Standards, Metadata, Information Architecture, Services, Evaluation, and Preservation. We’re very excited about the project and will post regular updates about how it’s going. Perhaps we’ll even hear from some of the students themselves on this very blog (if they want a good grade, that is . . .).

How times have (and haven't) changed at UNC

A recent news feature in the UNC-Chapel Hill student paper, the Daily Tar Heel, about alcohol use among students reminded me of these photos from Hugh Morton’s days on campus. It seems that college kids will be college kids, whether it’s the early 1940s or the 2000s. I have to say, though, that these first two images look somewhat staged to me. Morton worked as a photographer for the DTH, the Yackety Yack (yearbook), and other campus publications while he was a student—maybe he set these shots up to go with some piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism?

Or perhaps not so hard-hitting after all. Stephen and his freakish memory recognized the image below from the student publication Tar an’ Feathers, a cheeky, sometimes raunchy humor magazine put out from 1940-1942, for which Morton was photographer (and may have contributed other material). A cropped version of the image appears at the bottom of page 15 in the April 1942 issue, with a caption that reads:

“A shot by Hugh Morton showing what happens in the split second when a beer can is opened. Joe Miller stooges, while Elmo Hollingshead soberly contemplates.”

(The Tar an’ Feathers is so rich that I’ll have to save it for a later blog post; in the meantime, if you’re interested in UNC student publications you can check out the exhibit Tar Heel Ink, which the North Carolina Collection Gallery produced in 2005.)

One thing has changed on campus very recently, and that’s the expansion of the No Smoking Policy which extends non-smoking areas to 100 feet from University facilities (forcing smokers to gather under the flagpole at the center of the quad). Gone are the days when students (or anyone, for that matter) can puff at will as the fellow pictured below was able to do when Morton snapped his photo.