Moving Pictures
Photo Archive System Will Project Mary Washington's Past into the Future
By Neva S. Trenis
With alumni spread from Australia to Venezuela, not everyone can return to Mary Washington for the Centennial Celebration. But, with a computer and Internet access, anyone can enjoy a look back at the first 100 years of the school on Marye’s Heights – through photographs.
Thanks to one of the University’s most enduring centennial initiatives – the creation of a searchable online photo archive – historic images are just a click away. What’s more, the project is preserving copies of a century’s worth of photographs that have been tucked away in drawers, boxes, and storerooms across campus.
Though the project is ongoing, hundreds of shots are already available for viewing at http://archive.umw.edu. (For details about how to access them, see Photos in a Flash.) Alumni can get involved, too, by adding information about pictures they recognize and by sharing nostalgic images of their own on a related blog at http://centennial.umwblogs.org.
Well before the Centennial, many faculty and staff members worked diligently to preserve deteriorating paper photographs at UMW. Though they usually worked alone, they envisioned a University-sponsored online archive through which images could be shared across campus and beyond for teaching, research, and publications.
When UMW saw its birthday bash on the horizon, it seemed every department started searching for historic photos as they crafted displays and remembrances. The Centennial Committee began building a 7- by 10-foot portable timeline using text and images for display in the state capitol and wherever UMW speakers traveled. And the centennial coffee-table book, Moments in Time, a photo documentary of Mary Washington by Lynda Richardson ’81, required images to accompany a synopsis of the school’s early years, as has William Crawley Jr.’s definitive history of the University, A Centennial History, to be published later this year.
In March 2006, UMW librarians, historians, editors, administrators, museum curators, and technology specialists gathered to discuss the creation of a digital archive. After countless meetings and hours of research, the group partnered with Simpson Library to adopt and install a searchable online database. The software they chose could be adapted not only for centennial projects, but well beyond. Because of that, it is ultimately capable of archiving documents such as this magazine, student research, and papers, as well as sound files, video, and more.
But the task at hand was the Centennial.
Committee members and student aides started the time-consuming process of carefully handling the old photographs and scanning them to create large, high-resolution files that could be reprinted at most any size. Often a single scan took 10 minutes or longer, and that was before any details about the photo – its dimensions, what department it came from, and any information written on it – were recorded and entered into the database along with the digital file.
Since January 2007, archivists and students have been adding information about the images so that each one can be used and identified in publications and scholarly works as well as enjoyed by the casual browser. Some of the photos came to the archive with the names of the events, places, and subjects depicted in them. Many included no information beyond the size of the original print.
That’s where alumni can add to the project: If you have information about an image, or if you have Mary Washington photos you’d like to share, the archive committee has created a blog that includes 50-plus favorite archive photos. There, anyone may add information and insight. The blog links to the UMW centennial group on Flickr, an online photo-sharing service, where users may upload their own Mary Washington pictures. For more information, see the sidebar “Photos in a Flash.”
Today, the commemorative photo collection includes nearly 1,000 images, and there are many times more than that left to scan and enter. New photos are added regularly, so stop by the site and join the celebration!