“I saw a need and just started doing it,” said Don Johsnon.
Johnson is the digitizer here. He finds ways to make images of items in the collection more accessible to more people. He’s been doing this for about five years, and got started by simply trying to solve a problem.
“One patron would come in wanted to look at all these old maps, but we didn’t have a way for him to look at the maps or even figure out what we had.”
He first tried to scan the maps but their size proved difficult.
“A lot of places that needed scans that were a large format just used a camera. I thought ‘well what a great idea’ because that way we can use a camera for a lot of other things too,” said Johnson.
So two days a week Johnson dedicates his time to photography.
“There are some creative challenges with getting some of these photographs which I find kind of fun.”
“There are some flags that were like six feet by twelve feet. You can’t just put it on the table, so I had to get a couple of sheets and put the sheets on the floor and spread the flag out on the floor. Then I had to get our tallest ladder, which I I’m afraid of, I don’t really like it, then climb up to the top of it, and clamp a bar to it with the camera.”
Working through one collection at a time, at one photo at a time, he is slowly making his way through the items in the back room.
“Ten or fifteen thousand photos maybe,” estimates Johnson. “Which doesn’t sound like a lot over that time period, but that two days a week and doing other stuff besides just taking pictures that’s still quite a few,” said Johnson.
