The McArdle Scrapbooks > About the Digitization

The McArdle Scrapbooks: About the Digitization

Ruskin McArdle, son of artist Henry McArdle, spent a considerable amount of his own time and money compiling his father's papers and having them bound into large leather-bound ledgers weighing close to 10 pounds each. What Ruskin could not foresee was the toll that time would take on his work. Since 1929, when the ledgers first came into the custody of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the leather binding has dried considerably, resulting in significant cracking of the spines. Many items pasted in the scrapbooks have become faded with age, and some have come loose. Multi-page items such as pamphlets or letters were often affixed to a single scrapbook page. Some of these items lay open flat with ease; others that have become more brittle over time, do not.

Ruskin McArdle's scheme for organizing the papers was his own creation. He pasted on individual scrapbook pages; others attached to only one page; others layered on pages with two or three other letters. He ordered the material as he thought would be most useful to future generations. Perhaps a historian or archivist might have done it differently. However, the organization scheme is a large component of the uniqueness of the McArdle scrapbooks .

State Archives staff made the decision to preserve the historic binding rather than to disassemble the scrapbooks. Staff decided that the unique qualities of the scrapbooks should be reflected on the website, which would give readers the opportunity to page through the book, just as if they were able to sit down with it at the State Archives. The website is organized to allow this navigation experience for the reader. For more details, see How to Use This Site.

The Texas State Library and Archives first digitized the McArdle scrapbooks in 2001. This provided access to the books online but due to the technology of the time, the images were limited to only black-and-white and were low-resolution. In 2021, the McArdle scrapbooks were imaged on an i2s Quartz A1 Suprascan overhead book scanner. With a built-in cradle, this large scanner allowed the books to lie flat and the full spread of the books to be captured at once. Each page was captured as an uncompressed TIFF color image file at 600 pixels per inch, and lower resolution JPEG color image files are used on the website for efficiency.

For downloadable images from the scrapbooks visit the Texas Digital Archive.

Other online exhibits from the Texas State Library and Archives

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