Behind the Scenes: Scanning Sally Ride’s Archival Papers

As I began my contract archivist position with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, I had no idea what awaited me.  I remembered quite clearly from the job description that I would mostly be scanning the archival papers of Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, for a period of six months.  But the question remained of how I would accomplish the scanning.

Notebooks containing Ride's Notes from the Roger's Commission.

Sally K. Ride Papers, 

Box 13, Folder 8

In past archival jobs, I mainly used the standard tool for digital scanning: the Epson flatbed scanner.  When I arrived on my first day at Hazy, there was an Epson flatbed scanner in my own cubicle.  However, as that day went on, one of my supervisors showed me another machine that was situated in my cubicle.  This mechanical apparatus was a huge flatbed component with two long rods attached to it in the back.  At the top of each rod was a lighting fixture.  The other main feature, perhaps the main draw of this device, was a straightened rod in the middle of the flatbed.  This part of the device contained an attachment holding a camera that jutted out over to the flatbed’s middle section.  My supervisor explained to me that this device was called the Walter Nagel Archive Scanner.  She then told me that this device, along with its accompanying software program, Multidotscan, were recent purchases by the National Air and Space Museum Archives in order to perform bulk scanning of archival documents.  And, here’s the kicker: I would be the first archivist in the department to utilize this new technology. 

Seeing such a device might overwhelm any archivist, regardless of experience.  Yet, I soon mastered it!  With some training from my supervisor, I developed a process to use the Walter Nagel Archive Scanner (nicknamed” WALLY” in our office).  First, I would turn on the lights of the scanning apparatus, switch on the camera, boot up the computer (where the Multidotscan software was installed) and turn that on.  Once the program was up and running, I input the Sally Ride collection ID number (e.g. NASM.2014.0025) and then typed in the respective box and folder number of the items that I was scanning.  After all of that set up, I was ready to begin scanning over 38,000 pages of Sally Ride’s archival materials.

Invitation to Become a Member of the International Platform Association, 1985
Sally K. Ride Papers, Box 40, Folder 2

Archives and technological innovations go hand-in-hand, mainly because any new technological devices can help our profession make knowledge and information more available to researchers and the general public.  In this increasing digital age, a scanning device such as WALLY was quite useful in a number of ways:

1.     The software (via the camera) was able to adjust easily to a variety of different document sizes.  From the usual 8x11 inch size papers to various small documents such as business cards to invitations, WALLY was able to attune itself to these different sizes automatically.  This was a tremendous advantage for me, as I was able to go through hundreds of documents each day, and not have to painstakingly adjust the scanning parameters as I would with an Epson flatbed scanner’s software.

2.     A component of the Multidotscan software allowed me to scan two pages of soft-bound books at once.  Using this aspect of WALLY allowed me to quickly scan books that would have taken a few days to scan with a regular flatbed scanner scanning one page at a time.

3.     Scanning the contents of each folder, I would sometimes get a finished scan that I felt wasn’t up to my own (and the Archives’) standards of quality.  These usually consisted of documents where the text, depending on the lighting of the scanning apparatus, made it come across as faded.  For these mishaps, I would delete the previous scan, reposition the archival item, and scan it again to get the best quality scan.  Normally when using a flatbed scanner, deleting a scan because it is substandard would require going back into the Epson software and retyping the previous number to maintain proper numerical order.  However, with WALLY, I could take as many scans as I wanted of one item and delete all of them without worrying about the numerical order.  Doing so allowed me, when I finished scanning the contents of a folder, to transfer the scanned items over to another computer in my cubicle with the Multidotscan software, which compiled and numbered all of the scanned items, excluding my deletions.

National Association for Girls and Women in Sports Certificate, 1984
Sally K. Ride Papers, Box 40, Folder 6

These three advantages that I have listed were of great help in being able to scan the entirety of Sally Ride’s collection.  I was able, in my best estimates, to get through two to three boxes per day. All of this resulted in finishing the scanning of the collection in early February 2020.

Being the first NASM Archives user of the WALLY Scanner was advantageous, as it helped me to digitize and process a collection of 63 boxes (24 cubic feet) within a period of six months; if I had used an Epson flatbed scanner, it would have taken several years!  The use of WALLY to efficiently digitize document collections perfectly synchs with the Smithsonian's main mission: the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

George Tyler Crock

Project Archivist

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives


*Be sure to check out another blog about this collection, "Transcribing the Sally K. Ride Papers", by Patti Williams.