Project Overview

One set of Franklin Furnace’s artists’ books collection, and all corresponding material, was transferred to MoMA in 1993. Franklin Furnace recently undertook a major project to digitize, catalog, and make publicly available all the original vertical file material submitted by artists along with their books, from 1976 through 1993. In 2019, the Furnace began borrowing these materials back from MoMA, completing this major digitization project in 2023.

The project was initiated in 2016 by Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist at Franklin Furnace. With the cooperation of MoMA, Franklin Furnace undertook the digitization and description of the Vertical Files Collection to item level, making the material freely and publicly available and encouraging a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the genre of artists’ books. After three years of failed efforts to secure funding from the National Endowments for Humanities and MoMA, in 2019 Franklin Furnace received generous support from the Pine Tree Foundation of New York, enabling the organization to move forward with and successfully implement the digitization project.

The complete vertical files comprise artist files, objects, exhibition records, index cards, catalog worksheets, grant applications, accession logs, administrative records, correspondence, and original art. The files are stored in fifty-two archival record storage boxes at MoMA’s Queens location. Thirty-five boxes were processed for this project, a selection limited to materials descriptive of and associated with individual books and artists.

After carefully reviewing the first shipment of five Vertical Files boxes, Michael Katchen established 17 controlled vocabulary terms to be used to describe each of the various items in this wide-ranging collection. Michael also customized a dedicated FileMaker database as the cataloging platform for this project. In February 2021, custom photographic digitization stations were installed, and after several iterations and successful testing, the digitization project officially started in August 2021.

Environment & Digitization stations

To align with high-standard digitization parameters according to the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), Franklin Furnace’s digitization photographic specialist Tsubasa Berg set up an in-house customized copy stand, with controlled lighting in a consistent physical work environment. The copy stand setup went through several iterations to ensure that it can consistently produce high-quality images for flat items.

Parameters such as illumination uniformity and color accuracy were identified as being more crucial to the image quality than others and were prioritized in achieving the highest FADGI rating (4 star).

A slide copier and a lightbox were used specifically for photographing every slide and slide sheets. A pull-down retractable backdrop has been prepared to convert a desktop into a tabletop studio setup for documenting three dimensional contents.

Page-level digitization

This work resulted in page-level digitization, allowing researchers and members of the general public to explore the entire Vertical Files collection online.
Over the course of 3 years, Franklin Furnace created records for 52,737 images for 25,365 items, from over 3,500 artist folders.

Cataloging Process

For digital asset management (DAM) Franklin Furnace uses FileMaker Pro as it has done since 1997. A project database is created by combining the metadata from two sets of independently created folder-level catalog records of the vertical files, one created by Franklin Furnace and one created by MoMA. The original Franklin Furnace 1992 database was created prior to the acquisition from MoMA, including folder names and approximate item counts. MoMA re-processed the collection and provided their own identification for each folder that helps maximizing interoperability with MoMA’s physical storage.

The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), Library of Congress Name Authority File (NAF) and The Getty’s Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) are used for names authority checks to control entry of creator names during cataloging.

All material in the vertical files are cataloged under three folder types: artist file, exhibition file and object file. 17 controlled vocabulary are established to describe the various items: artwork, announcement card, bibliographic sheet, biography form, catalog/ checklist, correspondence, donation receipt, news media, portrait of artist, promotional materials, photo media, poster, publishing rights, resume/ CV, slides (35mm), writing, other.

Files are cataloged following Simple Dublin Core metadata schema to capture descriptive metadata. Additional customized fields are created to accommodate other data, such as name authority, MoMA finding aid notes, item representation and redaction information. Each image was cataloged with detailed metadata, describing the size, date, item category, source format, image view and sequence. Three views are available in the database to reflect the structure of the physical organization: folder, item and image views.

Publishing on CONTENTdm

These newly available resources are enabling innovative research and providing long-term benefits for artists, scholars, researchers, students, and the general public. Franklin Furnace’s Vertical Files project ensures in perpetuity the long-term availability of these primary resource materials and their discoverability – all the digitized materials are published on the CONTENTdm database and available online.