Updates on the DSS Archives from the Museum of Danish America

What can you access already?

Coming from a very Danish town in Wisconsin, I was curious whatever happened to the Sisterhood Enighed Lodge #14, founded in 1890. I went to the Museum website section “explore,” then “View Collection”. The keywords I used were, “Neenah, Wisconsin.” I was delivered 14 results of which all of the objects had a reference to Neenah. Success! I found a handwritten letter written in 1958 that states that the remaining three sisters were dissolving the lodge. Unfortunately, I did not recognize any of the last sisters. –

Mindy Brown, Littleton, CO

What is the Next Step for the Sisterhood Collection?

I have met with various lodges and district conventions over the last year, both in person and via Zoom, to report on the completion of what I am calling Phase One of the Sisterhood Archive Project. As you all know, from my communications in the DSS News, I spent two full years with your collection. I organized and cataloged material to make it easier to find upon request. I also scanned examples from the collection that you would be able to browse online and get a visual idea of what is contained in the collection.

Creating digital images of a collection is a costly, time-consuming process. To give you an idea, I scanned one small ledger totaling 150 pages, to provide to a fellow Sister for translation. It took me nearly a full day of work, approximately 8 hours, to use our simple scanner to photograph the individual pages and turn them into a computer file. Then I manually adjust the outside edges of each image before finalizing the file.

I believe complete scanning of this massive collection is unnecessary. I have, however, prioritized pieces of the collection for Phase Two scanning.

The 300 ledgers in the collection are my top scanning priority. Some of these are quite fragile and would be better preserved under minimal use. Scanning these would make them available to Sisters and researchers all over the world. It would also make it easier to share the earlier ledgers for translation. The secretary and member ledgers are the most valuable for gaining both insight into the times when they were created and locating family members for genealogical research. There are also treasury ledgers, which show a map of expenses and the financial stability of the organization through time.

Secondarily, the DSS News is one of my most requested research pieces. Because these are typed, they can be scanned and put through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process, which means a researcher would be able to search for names or topics within a newsletter.

How do we do this?

I’ve determined that we would need an overhead book scanner to maximize productivity. Rigsarkivet, the National Danish Archive, uses overhead book scanners for its current project scanning the Danish Church books, which are very similar to our ledgers. One technician is able to get cont. on page 6 cont. from page 5 through approximately 15 books a day, since they scan and adjust at the same time. The cost of purchasing a book scanner is prohibitive, but renting one is reasonable and available to the museum. We would hire a six-month intern to scan the materials and upload them to the museum’s online library which is already in existence. This would make your ledgers and newsletters available to search online in a very short period of time. I look forward to seeing more of you at the DSS National Convention this year, and walking you through the process of searching materials that are already available to you.

Congratulations to our Centenarians

CELEBRATING YOU!

April

Today we honor and treasure your life and wish you a very Happy Birthday!

Helen Corlin Howard • Born April 22 in San Francisco, CA • 104 years old • Petaluma Lodge #126 • Joined June 1997