Videos From NARA: Digital Preservation of the Iraqi Jewish Archive

NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) has released a group of videos on YouTube as the Iraqi Jewish Artifacts exhibit opens tomorrow (November 8) in the  Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.
A virtual version of the exhibit along with more than 2000 books and archival entries are also available and searachable online. More materials will be added to this resource moving forward. All items will be available by June 1, 2014.
Background, special events, and before & after photos (via NARA)

NARA: Iraqi Jewish Archive Videos

Doris Hamburg, Director of Preservation Programs, takes viewers to the state of the art digital processing lab at the National Archives at College Park. Inside the lab, Jennifer Seitz, Digital Imaging Specialist, and Norris White, Digital Imaging Technician, show how these historic and fragile materials are photographed, scanned and digitized.

Doris Hamburg, Director of Preservation Programs, and Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Chief of the Document Conservation Laboratory, go “behind the scenes” to show the incredible journey of this trove of materials from Baghdad to Texas to College Park, MD. Iraqi Jewish Archive staff including Sue Murphy, Project Manager, Katherine Kelly, IJA and Anna Gilbert, IJA, discuss and show the ongoing work to make preserve this historic collection.

Go behind-the-scenes to see the work being done on these materials at the state-of-the-art Conservation lab at the National Archives at College Park. IJA staff demonstrate the fascinating yet painstaking preservation work required to stabilize and preserve these historic materials

Doris Hamburg, Director of Preservation Programs at National Archives at College Park MD, and Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Chief of the Document Conservation Laboratory, share the dramatic and heroic story of how these historic materials were found and rescued, and how the National Archives is preserving them.

Maurice Shohet, President of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq, finds his own school records amongst the materials at the National Archives at College Park. He brings these records to life – providing context and sharing his family story and pictures.

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, News, Preservation, Video Recordings