Thanks for the info Dennis! When I was in the research room (203), I was thinking to myself how great it would be if they had some special lights to illuminate the documents with and also something to hold down the ones that had to be unfolded to be seen. I was thinking about something transparent like a piece of Plexiglas to place over the entire document, instead of weights to position on the corners and edges, but it would have to be glare-free to be able to get good pictures. I guess it would be alright to use weights though. I was also thinking I should have brought my tripod with me.

Anyway, I went ahead and took my pictures just using whatever light was available in the room, but I took them at an angle to keep from having a shadow on the documents. I was holding the camera myself and trying to keep it as steady as I could while taking each picture. I could tell by viewing each one on my camera display monitor and zooming in on them that some were slightly out of focus, so I ended up retaking a few. The next time I go, I’ll definitely try to use the camera station and also take my laptop so I can pop my camera disk into it and get a good view of all of the pictures I take to make sure I’m happy with them before leaving.

It would also be a good idea to have my laptop along, so if for some reason I decided to copy documents onto a flash drive using the copiers in room 203. That way I could immediately put the flash drive into my laptop and check out the content and quality of those copies prior to leaving. I actually did this (made some copies onto my flash drive) when I was at the Archives in December, but since I didn’t have my laptop with me I could only see what I was copying on a small screen on the copier, which was kind of hard for me to really tell exactly what all was going to be on my copy. It’s hard to believe there's a charge of 0.25 per page to make a digital copy of a document onto a flash drive without printing out a paper copy!

Something I find ridiculous with the original documents (Confederate compiled service records) I took pictures and made copies of, is the size of the envelopes they are stored in! It seems to me it would be much better to store these old documents in larger envelopes and/or folders, so they don’t have to be folded the way they are and also so they literally don’t have to be stuffed back into the small envelope they were removed from, which has to be causing wear and tear on them. I wonder if the folds present on each of the folded documents are the original ones made by the soldiers carrying them in the 1860s, or if the documents were folded the way they are, by Archives employees years ago (in the early 1900s), just to get them into the small envelopes they’re currently stored in? Don't get me wrong - I know we're lucky to still be able to actually see these original documents and I know it's a privilege to do so, but I also strongly believe they could be stored in a better way to help ensure their preservation. I guess I should just be happy many of these documents can still be seen, photographed and/or copied by the public!