Published:
By Ryan L. Williams
The Memory Lab at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library provides equipment for digitizing home movies and scanning photographs and slides. The Memory Lab also provides resources, classes and programs on taking care of physical and digital possessions and your personal archiving projects.
It’s Tuesday afternoon in the lower level of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and in a nondescript studio sits Mount Pleasant resident Nancy Shai. A self-described “photographer by passion,” Nancy begins the first of her three-hour appointment in the Memory Lab, a free online and in-person service which enables library cardholders the ability to digitize personal photographs and video formats. Nancy?Susan, an active customer, opens her manilla folder surrounded by the Memory Labs equipment, revealing a stack of negatives and proof sheets in aged hues of black and brown.
Her collection, most of which highlights the protests and history of Adams Morgan, spans over three decades and forty-five boxes. Here in the Memory Lab, she arrives with a handful that she knows she’ll be able to complete during her appointed time, actively working with the Labs Staff and archivists at the library to ensure these glimpses of Washington history are preserved.
“Looks like these are from 2001,” she deftly calls out, recognizing friends, neighbors and political leaders that reflect her nearly forty-seven years in Mount Pleasant. “My sister taught first grade at H.D. Cooke Elementary, and here are a bunch of her kids. Luigi now works for Geek Squad at the Best Buy.”
Nancy joins hundreds of D.C. residents who spend their time converting photo and film formats with the Memory Lab since the central library’s 2020 reopening and $211 million modernization. The Memory Lab, which launched in 2015, along with the Fabrication and Studio Labs now make up the library’s lower “A” level of services to residents. Customers who use the Memory Lab make appointments online and can book three-hour sessions up to twice a month. While inside, staff guide customers to the “DIY” nature of the service, bringing what Labs Manager Victor Benitez describes as “personal treasures” to the library for digital preservation.
“It may be a photograph of a grandparent or a piece of information that links the family in some way or another like a home video. It’s really sentimental,” says Victor. Key components of the Memory Lab include the physical “digitization” lab which is equipped to ensure the proper transfer of documents, photographs, audio and video files to digital, as well as providing a central location for instructing the public on preservation, either one-on-one or in a classroom setting. The Labs team train customers on everything from how to properly save and archive digital photos and audio files to advice around genealogy and records preservation.
“There is no way to quantify the impact that providing this type of service has or can have on a person or communities, says Biljana Milenkovic, Adult Librarian who supports the Memory Lab, “you cannot put a price on it.” “Just ten days ago, a person came and digitized an audio cassette that captured the voice of her great-great-great-grandmother that her great-grandmother recorded, a person they never saw.”
“We all have a voice that we want to hear just once again in our lives. And for many people when they come to the Memory Lab, it is capturing that moment.” Biljana remarks, citing a former colleague.
The Labs staff make it clear that their space does not compete with the Library of Congress or National Archives in terms of the best archival practices. “We understand following the best practices of digital preservation is often a hard step to reach,” says Biljana. What the Memory Lab offers are resources for long-term preservation, instructing customers from the library’s website on how to transfer 35mm, VHS, or floppy disk content to digital, and how to properly care for their physical and digital archives for preservation.
Biljana and her colleagues ensure customers see the importance of digitizing customer’s memories, and making the process accessible to their understanding of what it takes before, during and after their visit to the library. From a scrapbook that’s passed down to descendants, a grandparent's recipe book with personal instructions and updates, to a mother and her teenage daughter archiving a video of the daughter's first steps, the Memory Lab ensures personal and family memories are preserved for safekeeping.
Preserving personal memories through the Memory Lab goes beyond the emotional center, but provides valuable data for researchers, according to Victor. “It can be used for a variety of purposes, creating a larger story of D.C. because it talks about family structure and leisure in D.C.”
The Labs team also makes the process of digital preservation accessible to the customer's knowledge base, helping to relieve any fear of the technology involved and ensuring that they’re able to do it on their own. “They’re really surprised by the big gap between how much it costs to have a service digitize their data versus them actually doing it for themselves, with the right equipment. Once they get started,” says Victor, “that intimidation sort of goes away.”
“Biljana is probably the most helpful, which is saying a lot because the library is full of helpful people,'' shares Nancy, describing a frustrating session digitizing a large document. “She kept saying we are going to get through this. You can’t be frustrated with Biljana, she knows what she’s doing.”
For Biljana, this is a service she’s thrilled to take part in. “The Memory Lab fits perfectly into one of the core values of librarianship, and that’s sustainability, says Biljana.” “It is environmentally sound, socially equitable, and since it’s free, available to everyone. While there are some hurdles to jump over, It’s an economically feasible practice that helps build and bind us in some way.”
Image 1: Memory lab customer Lisa Waldschmitt holds an old family film
Image 2: Digitized at the Memory Lab: Nancy's daughter and two-year-old granddaughter in 2001. credit: Nancy Shia
Image 3: Digitized at the Memory Lab:Two youth pose in front of "Fat cat" graffiti at the former Arthur Capper Housing Complex in Southeast DC in 2001. credit: Nancy Shia
Image 4: Adult Librarian Biljana Milenkovic assists Memory Lab customer Lisa Waldschmitt. credit: Maurice Moore
This article was first featured in the November - December 2022 print issue of Discover Magazine, produced by DC public Library.
Curious about preservation efforts at DC Public Library? Please visit The People's Archive to learn more and to explore our collections.
If you would like to digitize your own collections, please visit The Labs to learn more. Participation in Labs activities requires completing a Labs Orientation and a Participant Release form. Orientations and sessions require a DC Public Library card.