BPL Digital Reproduction Studio

The Digital Reproduction Studio at the Boston Public Library

The Digital Reproduction Studio is located on the 3rd Floor of the Boston Public Library. The Digital Production Manager is Tom Blake, who is responsible for all digitisation production efforts within the Studio.

The following illustrates where this collection of images is stored in their physical form, what the photographic negatives look like, how they are individually archived, and the equipment used to digitise each negative in the studio.

The entire Leslie Jones collection (approximately 34,000 photographic plates) is stored on the 5th floor of the Boston Public Library. The collection has been catalogued and archived, and is usually maintained by Aaron Schmidt, who also services the public by retrieving images when requested. If you are interested in seeing the physical collection, please do not hesitate to contact the Print Department at the library to arrange a visit.
The images are photographic plates, all stored in separate boxes as shown in the photograph. Each image is stored in a sleeve upon which Leslie Jones himself penciled in the descriptions of each photograph. These descriptions have been associated with each digital image, and in this collection serve as the title of each image (located above each image).
Each glass plate image was treated with an emulsion of light sensitive silver salts, a common technique at the time. Most of the glass plates are negative images, although there are a few positives in the collection, as well as actual film.
Each image was digitised by placing it on a light table where it was photographed. Thanks goes to both Danny Pucci and Stephen Stose for their tireless work at this ongoing task.
The camera used to digitise the Leslie Jones Collection was a Sinar AG Sinarback 54 FW, Sinar m. The camera is ceiling mounted. It uses Sinar CaptureFlow Studio suite to help with digital post-processing and to save the images as RAW files for institutional preservation. The images you see on this site are all JPEG derivatives of these RAW preservation files.