Services
Archival services for families, community organizations, and businesses in New Orleans
Photographs, papers, film, tape, and the digital files that came after them — organized, described, digitized, and preserved to the standard a museum uses for its own collection. On site across New Orleans and surrounding areas, or by mail for film.
Start with what you have
Five doors into the same practice.
Every collection is handled with the same method — consult, assess, arrange and describe, digitize and preserve, hand off. What differs is the material and who it belongs to. Pick the page that sounds like your boxes.
-
Photos & documents
Family photographs, letters, albums, and papers — inventoried, described, protected in archival-grade materials, and scanned, with a finding aid so your family can search it.
Prints · negatives · slides · albums · letters · papers
-
Film
8mm, Super 8, 16mm, and 35mm inspected, mended, and cleaned by hand before frame-by-frame capture. The step the volume services skip.
8mm · Super 8 · 16mm · 35mm · mail-in
-
Video & audio
VHS, camcorder tapes, cassettes, and reel-to-reel audio transferred before the tapes — and the machines that play them — are gone.
VHS · Hi8 · MiniDV · cassette · reel-to-reel
-
Community archives
For the nonprofit, congregation, krewe, club, or neighborhood whose history is scattered across members’ homes. One collection, one catalog, and standards a grant funder and a future partner will both accept.
Nonprofits · congregations · krewes · clubs · neighborhoods
-
Business & nonprofit
Records that prove how long you have been here, and a heritage collection you can actually use for the anniversary, the book, and the wall.
Corporate records · founders' papers · marketing archives · anniversaries
What every engagement consists of
Same order · every collection
-
01
Consult
A free conversation, on site or from photographs. What is there, roughly how much, what condition it is in, and what you need to be able to do with it.
-
02
Assess
Every box opened and listed. Condition problems noted now, not halfway through. You get a written assessment and a proposal with a fixed price for the scope.
-
03
Arrange and describe
The collection put in an order that reflects how it was made and used, and described item by item or folder by folder — names, places, dates, and how we know.
-
04
Digitize and preserve
Fragile items placed in archival-grade enclosures; what merits digitizing captured at archival resolution and named to match. Damaged items stabilized and mended using archival-grade techniques.
-
05
Hand off
The originals back in labeled boxes, the finding aid, the digital files, and a walk-through — including how to keep adding to it.
Who this is for
Three kinds of client. Three different worries.
- Families & estates
- Nothing gets thrown away, everything gets a name, and you end up with something your children can search. Usually starts with photos and documents or a box of film.
In detail
Inheriting or accumulating relatives’ belongings often means inheriting decades of unlabeled photos, letters, and documents — a life’s worth of history that can feel overwhelming to sort through alone. Archiving turns that into an organized, lasting collection instead of a box that risks being lost to time or neglect. I tag each item with names, dates, and locations, and organize it in a simple, searchable format so no one has to guess who’s in a photo or when a letter was written.
- Community organizations
- Old photos, meeting minutes, newsletters — scattered across members’ homes and at risk of being lost. Brought together into one organized collection your group can maintain and grow. See community archives.
In detail
Communities tend to accumulate history in scattered places: old photos, meeting minutes, newsletters, stored here and there and at risk of being lost. Archiving brings it all together into one organized collection your community or group can maintain and grow. I want your history to be organized and accessible so your initiative or campaign can learn and grow from it.
- Businesses
- Record keeping is built for the short term; archival practice is built for the long term. What’s historically or legally significant, preserved and findable — a legacy you can actually draw from. See business and nonprofit archives.
In detail
Regular record keeping is built for the short term. Archival practices are built for the long term, preserving what’s historically or legally significant and keeping fragile materials from degrading. I can tag everything with detailed metadata and organize it in whatever system works best for you — from Google Sheets to Excel to Airtable — so your team can find exactly what they need fast. For businesses with a long history, I can help make the difference between having records and having a legacy you can actually draw from.
Formats handled
If it is not here, ask
| Kind | Formats | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Photographs | Prints, negatives, 35mm and medium-format slides, glass plate, tintypes, cabinet cards, albums, scrapbooks | Photos & documents |
| Paper | Letters, diaries, certificates, ledgers, clippings, maps, blueprints, framed and oversize items | Photos & documents |
| Film | Regular 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm — silent, optical sound, and magnetic stripe | Film digitization |
| Video | VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C, Video8, Hi8, Digital8, MiniDV | Video & audio |
| Audio | Cassette, microcassette, reel-to-reel, oral history recordings | Video & audio |
| Born-digital | Hard drives, CDs and DVDs, memory cards, phone photo libraries, email, websites | Any full-collection project |
Film and tape are the ones with a clock on them. Acetate film shrinks and sours; magnetic tape sheds and the players stop being made. If you have to choose what to start with, start there.
Not sure which page you are? Start with a photo of the boxes.
Four questions and a picture is enough. I’ll tell you what you have, what it needs, and what it would take — honestly, including if what you need is a photo lab and not an archivist.
Book a free consult