Preserve

What’s your story? We preserve your memories in optimum, long-term conditions. We facilitate oral history methodology in our practice.

“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?” “I remember everything from when we first went together.”
– Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

As Media Conservators, we prepare your physical objects into long-term digitized items for preservation. We digitize your materials according to best practices established by the National Archives. We optimize the professional settings in Epson V600 and oversized scanners to create digital versions at the highest DPI. We integrate optical character recognition (OCR) for text based documents for searchability. We also transcribe handwritten correspondence. With our team of linguists, we translate these materials. Refer to the Scanning-Basics infographic created by UNC at Chapel Hill for more technical guidance.

70 Degrees provides art, artifacts, paintings, paper, photographic materials, furniture, book, sculpture, objects, wood and textile preservation and conservation. We draw on a team of experts to care for each object with best practices. Some of our recent community projects:

Oral History

We capture personal and community narratives in video interviews. Social history emphasizes the importance of collecting every day perspectives. We help you trace genealogical roots and preserve your heritage with tools like Ancestry and Family Search. Do you gather around the table to hear about the past from your elders and wonder if you’ll forget these experiences? Oral histories ensure that this past is never forgotten.

Oral history tradition comes from folklore traditions. The spoken word can be captured in audio and video format to allow access in the modern age. 70 Degrees uses a Zoom audio recorder and 4K/HD video recorders to create archive ready products. We use a three-point lighting system which can be used at your host institution or alternate site. Each oral history interview is accompanied with an abstract, recording log, transcript, photos provided by the narrator, a photo of the candidate at the time of the interview, and narrator-interview agreement forms. The release form expresses the narrator’s consent for the interview to be made available on online platforms. We can digitize ephemera and personal photos to accompany the interview record. We can store these materials on a password protected or open access web interface.

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

– Ernest Hemingway

We facilitate first person narratives in the form of oral history interviews in order to preserve the past. These long-format interviews are primary sources which are archived for the preservation purposes. We conduct these digital history projects in order to conserve the past according to Oral History Association & Southwest Oral History Association standards. See the Archiving Oral History: Manual of Best Practices on the OHA website.

In this age of COVID-19, facilitating Zoom hosted interviews has become very predominant. We can provide the technology and project guidance to create and sustain your projects. As leaders of the Southwest Oral History Association, we have developed a list of resources for you to use during these challenging times.

Preservation Projects

The Korean Pioneer Project contains digital archival materials. The descendants participated in oral histories in the United States to describe their family’s lasting legacies. This project is funded by the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Los Angeles.

As consultants, we advise for city preservation projects. We ensure that local histories are secured in perpetuity. We reference the Society of American Archivist’s Documenting in Times of Crisis: A Resource Kit. The SAA “templates and documents are divided into broad categories linked below, or see the complete Google Drive folder here.”

We utilize heritage tourism studies to demonstrate a site’s capacity to increase economic viability for an area. We help submit National Register of Historic Places and California Register of Historical Resources site nominations. We use California Preservation Foundation guidelines. We can help you with your federal and state historic site nominations. We suggest that you apply for the Mills Act Program that provides tax incentives to the applicant which helps secure your site’s future.

70°Conservation Lab

We suggest that archival materials should be catalogued in Omeka, ArchivesSpace, CONTENTdm, or other collection management software. We preserve and conserve your collections with care. Our approach is using archival grade materials to house your physical items and create digital records. We maintain original arrangement principles and best practices when organizing your materials in the conservation lab. You can consult our book list for more reading.

Jennifer and Cindy are Moulton Directors at the Moulton Museum that is scheduled to open in 2022. This Orange County pioneer family, led by Lewis Fenno Moulton and Nellie Gail Moulton, owned and operated Rancho Niguel. It became the Moulton Ranch which included nearly 22,000 acres. We conduct oral histories with the Moulton family and ranchers who operated this enterprise in partnership with OC Public Libraries. These interviews are available at OC Stories hosted by CONTENTdm. They include historical images, videos, and audio. View Eddie Grijalva’s story in the small town of El Toro and experiences on the Moulton Ranch. Jennifer reported the Moulton Museum partnership activities to the OC Historical Commissioners for their March 5th, 2019 meeting and February 4, 2020 meeting.

The Keil sisters utilize their cross-disciplinary skills to capture and preserve narratives. Jennifer and Cindy implemented the oral history Legacy Program at the Balboa Island Museum which has captured more that fifty interviews. This was a community history project of the island and the individuals who shaped the culture. A project proposal outlining all the stages was provided to the board prior to filming the candidates. The video archive contains over forty interviews. Four highlight reels were created to engage visitors at the oral history station. They are the following: Over the Bridge, Holiday Memories, Jolly Roger Memories, and Celebrity Encounters. Please read the BIMHS newsletter which contains more information about the project. Cindy and Jennifer presented, “Over the Bridge: Creating a Sustainable Oral History Program” at the Southwest Oral History Association conference in March 2015.

Del Mar Historical Society at the 2018 Southwest Oral History Association conference chaired by Jennifer in Fullerton, CA.

Jennifer and Cindy have been consultants to the Del Mar Historical Society (DMHS). Their collaboration project was featured at the 2018 SOHA Conference in Fullerton, CA in our panel titled, “Community Voices and Collaboration.” We are working on securing a permanent location for the Alvarado House. We would like to create a museum that would remain available to the public year-round which would include interactive educational tools.