Fax paper

Ani Orchanian <ani_orchanian [at] pmh__toronto__on__ca> writes

>I have received in my collection correspondence from the
>administrative offices that is on early fax paper (ca. 1990) which
>is glossy and fading. For one important document in particular,
>while it can be read today, the content is faded to the point that
>even dark photocopying cannot reproduce it.

Regarding the question about how to retrieve a faded image from
circa 1990 facsimile transmissions, I found one set of files in our
collection with many of these faded pages which were important to
us.

For the worst of them, which were basically unreadable with just
traces of the image still appearing, I worked with one of our people
who specializes in graphics and has a high quality color scanner and
monitor on her desk.  She placed each sheet of the faded fax
document onto her color scanner, then manipulated all the various
color scales and settings to their extremes of high contrast and
after some experimentation was able to recapture the actual text of
the documents. Once she had a good image she saved it to her hard
drive, then printed it out on a black and white laser printer onto
acid free paper.  I have replaced the faded originals with these
enhanced surrogates and have kept the computer files for eventual
on-line access to the information. I hope this idea is of help to
you,

Linda Most
Archivist/Librarian
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
701 Okeechobee Boulevard
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
561-651-4392
Fax: 561-651-5392

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:20
               Distributed: Thursday, September 16, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-13-20-004
                                  ***