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Many libraries and museums have important and valuable documents in their archives. These documents often have historical significance, and can include things like personal diaries, letters, and other valuable items. While it is the physical documents themselves that hold a lot of historical value, the information contained in them is just as valuable, and should be preserved in any way possible. One great way to catalog and preserve this information is to digitize the documents through companies like Backstage Library Works. Digitization turns your physical documents into high-quality digital images that can then be stored on a computer or even uploaded to the Internet. Why would you want to digitize your documents, you ask? Here are just 3 reasons to do so. Preserve the Information Unfortunately, disasters do happen. Fires, floods, and other natural disasters can strike a library or museum when you least expect it. They may even be stolen. Though many of these locations have safety systems in place to help protect their archived documents, these systems are not perfect; documents can still be damaged or completely destroyed in these kinds of disasters, or disappear at the hands of thieves. If you digitize your documents, the information they contain can be preserved, even if the documents themselves are lost. The digital images of the documents can be kept on a computer, or even uploaded to an online database to ensure that they are accessible, no matter what happens to the library or museum they were kept in. Share Your Documents History should belong to everyone; that's one of the essential principals behind public libraries and museums all around the country. However, transporting historical documents between museums or libraries presents some risks, as the documents are more likely to be damaged during transport. Some libraries don't loan out archival documents from their special collections at all, as it makes it more likely that the document will become lost. However, if you digitize the documents, you can share the information they contain without having to transport these valuable items to other locations. Archival documents are a part of history, and everyone has a right to enjoy them. Digitized documents makes this not only possible, but easy to accomplish, thanks to the Internet. People all around the world can read and enjoy these valuable pieces of history with just the click of a button. Make Them Searchable In addition to preserving images of historical documents, digitization offers you the ability to make the text contained in the documents searchable on a computer. Digitization companies use what is called OCR software--optical character recognition. This software is able to recognize both typed and handwritten characters, and converts it to text on the computer. Once this is done, a handwritten diary can now be searched using a simple "Find" feature on the computer. For example, if someone is looking for a specific diary entry, they no longer have to flip through the entire diary by hand to find what they are looking for. They can simply search for the date that the entry was written. Or, if they want to learn more about a specific person, they can search for and find every instance of that person's name in the document. Now, not only are your archival documents historical, but they're user friendly too. Digitizing documents of every kind is a valuable service. However, when it is used to preserve historical documents and share the information in them with others, its value is immeasurable. Make sure you work with a qualified company like Backstage Library Works that is experienced with handling sensitive historical documents.
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