This week was by and large the same as the last couple of weeks, HOWEVER, I did get to work with some new material! In addition to the usual Vonnegut and Welles collections, we started working on a collection of Latin American broadsides. If you don’t already know, broadsides are typically large pieces of paper (this collection is printed but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case) that are used to communicate information. One of the most famous examples of a broadside is the Dunlap broadside, which is better known by its other name: The Declaration of Independence. The Dunlap broadside is a printed copy of the original Declaration of Independence but it served to disseminate information about the reasoning behind the Continental Congress’s decision to separate the Colonies from English rule. According to the National Parks Services website (not sure why it’s there but who am I to judge) there are 26 copies of the Dunlap broadside still in existence, three of which are in British collections (TYPICAL).
Working with broadsides presented a little bit of a conundrum; while most of the time the broadsides are larger than usual print, they aren’t quite oversized meaning we don’t necessarily need to use the Bookeye (the overhead scanner). The papers are large enough that they are just able to fit onto the flatbed scanners, but aligning the material so everything is visible is a little tricky. We usually try to create a bit of a buffer around the materials we scan on the flatbed scanners, but due to the size of the material we’re working with the border ends up being extremely small if we are able to have one at all. Luckily all of the broadsides I was working with were in very good condition despite their age (some dated from the late 19th century) so I was fairly confident I could handle them and scan them safely.
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