Monthly Update
News And Updates :: Processing Collections Needs Your Help
The start of 2022 has been an exciting and busy one at the OA+D Archives. The month of January and well into February has seen us hard at work continuing to organize collections, save and acquire new archival materials, answer research inquiries, host several visitors to the research center, plan and produce future publications, but most of the time it's meant scanning. Lots and lots of scanning.
OA+D is a unique non-profit organization in many respects, but primarily it's one of the few that is proactively trying to digitize its collection holdings in order to make them accessible to the wider public. We strive to do that through our Archival Collections Website that hosts a variety of search functions and will continue to grow with new material as our volunteers are able to process it.
The many collections that make up the OA+D Archives hold tens of thousands of photographs, slides, transparencies—all of which we are constantly scanning. With the addition of the TA Collection last year, close to 15,000 photographic items came with it. They require us to review every one, identify what is shown, organize them within the larger Collection, and then scan. We can easily do this thanks to affordable desktop scanning solutions and the relatively small size of the material being scanned.
Unfortunately, the same isn't true of the tens of thousands of larger drawings, prints, and artwork that make up the collections. They are more difficult to scan and often require us to go to a third party to spend resources to get them scanned for publications or for research inquires.
It's why one of our newly identified goals for 2022 is to raise the funds necessary for OA+D to acquire its own large format scanner to install in the Chandler Research and Study Center.
This piece of equipment would allow us to scan the vast majority of the most stable large format materials we have (up to 36" x 48") at high resolution and in color. Having this capability would not only allow us to save funds by scanning in-house, but it would mean a quicker processing pace for digitizing collections— especially the TA Collection.
If you'd like to join the effort to help us raise $10,000 to acquire this piece of scanning equipment, please follow this link and give a generous tax-deductible donation online. If you'd rather send a check, we'd be happy to add that to the goal as well! Just reach out to info@oadarchives.com to talk to someone directly.
We're planning on acknowledging everyone who helps us if we successfully reach the $10,000 goal with a very special thank you commemorative gift—so give what you can and help us keep on scanning!
From The Archives
Exciting new materials are constantly being added to the OA+D Archives. At the end of 2021, OA+D was successfully able to acquire the remaining drawings from the Cary Caraway estate. Cary was an important and early member of the Taliesin Fellowship who stayed connected to Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fellowship long after leaving Taliesin to start his own architectural practice.
His papers and materials had been stored away for decades and unfortunately much of it had been broken up for sale. Luckily, OA+D was able to save the remaining drawings and the slide collection to keep them intact and ultimately make available to the public. Among the drawings was the original presentation rendering seen above for the Vigo Sundt House, an early independent commission that Frank Lloyd Wright allowed some Fellowship members to take on while working on his own projects.
Most of the materials are oversized and our hope is that if OA+D can successfully raise the donated funds for a large format scanner mentioned previously in this newsletter, the Cary Caraway Collection (among others) can be scanned in an expedited manner.
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