Get a ballpark estimate for your letter preservation project, with or without printed books.
Special attention items require varying degrees of additional work beyond the standard vintage letter. On average, they add 3–5 extra minutes each. If you don't know, that's fine — this is for estimate purposes only.
What counts as a special-attention item?
Special attention items require additional capturing, handling, equipment, or editing in order to digitize and display properly. Since you may have a combination of things, we do not bill per item because each one impacts the total studio time differently. Billing per piece would lock you into a fixed price per item, creating more friction for you to decide if you want to include something or not.
If you only have a handful across the whole collection, the impact on time is minimal.
Microfilm V-mail were letters photographed onto 16mm microfilm, then reprinted at roughly 1/4 of their original size. This method allowed the military to send 1,500–1,800 letters overseas on one 90-foot roll of film, reducing weight and volume, thus providing room for cargo, personnel, and equipment. The reprinted result is around 4.25 by 5.25 inches, rendering them difficult to read or transcribe. They may also be dark and muddy due to rushed battlefield processing and chemical aging. In most cases, we can improve the readability by increasing the size and enhancing brightness and contrast.
Bifolium is the early 20th century practice of folding a single sheet of paper like a card, then writing on each panel, like you would a greeting card. We have to spend a little extra time with those so that each panel of the bifolium is cropped and presented properly on the page, in proper page order. Many collections have none to very few, but occasionally we get a large collection comprised of mostly bifolium.
If you have multiple photos, we can arrange them multiple to a page, which saves printing extra pages. Or, we can leave them one per page. Setting up collage pages is also handled within the hourly rate.
Torn, brittle, or damaged pages • Postcards • Greeting cards • Index cards • Photos with dates on the back • Newspaper clippings • Small items you'd prefer combined on one page • Oversized items requiring overhead scanning • Programs, invitations, menus, maps, and ephemera.
