As part of my archival research and work with the Fourth Ward Oral History Project, I have been working on developing our process for obtaining, processing, and digitizing historical records relating to the urban renewal process in Raleigh. Using open-source designs, I built my own version of The Archivist, a scanner design developed by Daniel Reetz and documented as part of the DIY Book Scanning online community
This project is ongoing and is one of the central focuses of my current research and work, as I am currently developing my own software to be used with the scanner to digitize city records. You can see the present stage of the software development process via the project’s GitHub repository.
I built the scanner initially as part of my coursework in CRD 702: Rhetoric and Digital Media in the first year of my PhD program. During the course, I documented several aspects of the building and development process, which you can see compiled here.
This project has been a massive undertaking, and I am greateful to have done this alongside Jonathan Lane, who CAD experience was invaluable in working to make modifications to the original design and also made it possible to explore alternative materials to use in our version of the scanner. I also thank the team at Advanced Exterior Systems, who were generous in allowing me to make use of their scrap aluminum composite material and professionally cut the necessary panel pieces that comprise the body of the scanner. Finally, my thanks to Gene Lane, who aided us in laser cutting and 3D printing of many of the parts for the scanner. It trully took a team of people to put this together in the time that we did, and I am thankful to have such a talented and knowledgable group of designers, builders, and DIYers alongside me.