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wondarchive › Reading-room fonds

How do you go through a fonds photographed in a reading room?

You deposit the photos exactly as the camera recorded them; wondarchive straightens, transcribes and translates them in the order they were taken.

The box’s order, kept

Pages stay in the order they were shot; the shelfmark printed at the foot of the page is recognised and suggested for the pages that follow.

A bit crooked is fine

A page turned a quarter or half turn is set upright before reading; a page tilted a few degrees is read as is.

Search rather than leaf through

A name or date is searched across the whole fonds, shelfmark after shelfmark, instead of reopening each folder photo by photo.

A fonds, whatever the material

  • Administrative files and office correspondence
  • Bound registers and handwritten notebooks
  • Press files and newspaper cuttings
  • Mission reports and minutes
  • Plans, tables and numerical documents
  • Blank versos, mixed in without being invented
Letter from F. Barbedienne to the widow Barye, handwritten on printed letterhead, Paris, 3 April 1878 · Bibliothèque de l’INHA, collections Jacques Doucet, Archives 166 (fonds Antoine-Louis Barye), Licence Ouverte / Open Licence Etalab 2.0
Printed letterhead, 1878 — Bibliothèque de l’INHA

The account takes a minute to open, a hundred pages free for a year.

Do photos need renaming or sorting before depositing?

No. The order they were shot in is enough; a folder per shelfmark or per visit day is convenient but not required, the tool goes through subfolders.

Can a folder already deposited be redeposited without duplicates?

Yes: a fingerprint is computed before upload, and a file already online isn’t sent again.

What about near-blank pages or versos?

They’re recognised as such; no text is invented for a blank page.

How do you search the whole fonds afterwards?

A name, place or date is searched across all deposited shelfmarks, not just the one open.

See it on your own pages

A hundred pages transcribed and translated, for a year, no card required.