Digitizing Thousands of 35mm Slides for a Museum

As part of an initiative to preserve the visual history of Singerly Fire Company, I have been working with the department’s museum and archive committee to digitize the Bob Norman Collection. This sizable resource, containing over a half-century of fire service images, was added to the institutional repository by the company’s official fire photographer.

Fire Photographer Norman

Bob photographed calls while firefighters battled flames and worked other emergencies. Over the decades, his camera captured at least 10,000 images on 35mm slide film. Besides chronicling day-in and day-out activities, first responders used the action shots of firefighters for training, investigations, and public information. His comprehensive documentation is invaluable for anyone studying fire service history.

Of course, this large body of material required developing a process to safeguard the Kodak film and establish the historical context around each image. As preservation was the first challenge, the archive decided to migrate the physical collection of the film to digital format for long-term preservation and access. Up to this point, slides were projected on a screen to a roomful of people, but soon the collection will be conveniently accessible to anyone studying the department’s history. 

Digital Conversion Project

To convert the film to a digital format, the fire department worked with O.K Video of Claymont, DE, a company capable of handling large-scale digital preservation projects. Now that the scanning is completed, we are moving into the documentation phase to record pertinent information for each shot and contextualize the moments in time that were captured. This involves the development of a plan to catalog and archive the massive volume of slides.

This conservation and curation project enhances access to this unique archive of visual material, which documents Singerly’s heritage over two centuries in each shot.