Evan R. Spencer
M.A. in Public History
Microfilming County Tax Books
One of the main focuses of my internship at the Rutherford County Archives was to photograph, edit, and film county tax books. By law, the county must have a security copy of all vital records. Before my internship, the only copies of Rutherford County tax books from 1984-2005 were large paper books. After my internship, there are three copies (the original books and two 16mm microfilm copies) of each year's tax books.
The Tax Books
Each year, Rutherford County printed several thousands of pages of property tax records. The county then bound the books and labelled them according to the year. In the years that I converted to microfilm (1984-1992) during my internship, each year had an average of ten books.
Scanning and Editing
Each tax book had to be loaded onto the Atiz Book Scanner and each page individually scanned using the mounted cameras. The photographs were automatically sent to BookDrive Edit Pro, which I used to edit the images. The editing process consisted of cropping the photographs and altering the contrast, sharpness, and coloration of the images to provide the best quality image for micrfilm printing.
Microfilm Printing
After manually editing the images, I worked collaboratively with the Rutherford County Records Manager (Walker Burford) to transfer the images to microfilm. The first step in the process was to convert the edited images from .tif files to a file format specific to the Kodak Imagelink 9620 Archive Writer that printed the images on to 16mm microfilm. This writer prints microfilm that meets ISO/ANSI standards for a life expectancy of 500 years. After printing the film, we had to remove the film from the printer cartridge and on to a standard film roll. We completed this step of the process in a dark room. Finally, the film ran through the Imagelink Prostar Archive Processor. We manually loaded the film into the processor, which then automatically ran the film through two tanks of chemicals (solutions known as Develepor and Fixer, respectively) and dried the film. This part of the process prepared the film for use and ensured its longevity. After this stage, the film was complete.
I created two microfilmed copies of each year's tax books, one for access at the Rutherford County Archives, and one for storage at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.