DIY digitisation: How the Center for the Study of Political Graphics designed an in-house studio to digitise 90,000 political posters
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the need and urgency for archives to scale up digital collections to continue providing access to their materials. The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) planned, troubleshot and constructed an in-house digitisation studio with a limited budget and team. Since 2021, CSPG has digitised over 60,000 posters. More than half of these digitised images have been processed and added to CSPG’s collections management system. So far, over 20,000 of these digitised posters have been added to CSPG’s collections website. This paper provides an overview of how a relatively small poster archive created an in-house digitisation studio. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at http:// hstalks/business.
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Author's Biography
Samantha Ceja is responsible for cataloguing the Center for the Study of Political Graphics’ (CSPG’s) collection of posters, digitising them, and image processing their digital surrogates. In addition, she oversees the accessioning of born-digital posters, working to make these a part of CSPG’s growing poster collection. Prior to joining the archival team at CSPG, she worked at the Getty Research Institute and the CSUN Special Collections and Archives department and interned for the Los Angeles Public Library. She earned her BA in history from the California State University, Northridge, and a master of library and information science from San Jose State University.
Lisa Kahn manages the Center for the Study of Political Graphics’ (CSPG’s) digitisation of over 90,000 political graphics, including accessioning, cataloguing, digitisation, image processing, digital preservation and the supervision of volunteers and interns. She was introduced to CSPG through an internship facilitated by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) History Department’s Public History Initiative in 2017. Since 2016, she has worked for six different archival institutions including the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, the Jewish Women’s Archive and Zion National Park. She earned both her BA in history and her master of library and information science from UCLA.
