Our archival process and the standards we follow

Our standards come from the archival profession

We follow the practices used by working archivists rather than a set of house habits. That means preservation guidance consistent with the Society of American Archivists and the handling standards used by the National Archives, applied at the scale of a single family's collection. The goal is simple: the letters, photographs, and documents you entrust to us should leave in the same condition they arrived, or better, and the digital copies should outlast the originals.

How we handle physical materials

Paper and photographs fail from handling, humidity, light, and contact with the wrong materials. Our handling reflects that:

• Acid-free and lignin-free folders and enclosures, so the storage material does not attack the paper over time.
• Unbuffered archival tissue between photographs and fragile items, and a folder-and-tissue approach that keeps sheets from rubbing.
• Drop-front archival boxes sized to the materials, so nothing is bent, crammed, or left loose.
• Pencil and separate labels, never ink or adhesive, on documents themselves. Identification goes on the folder, not the artifact.
• Minimal, careful handling, clean and dry, with fragile items supported and never forced flat.

For a family in a humid climate this matters even more, because moisture is the fastest way to lose a paper collection.

How we digitize and organize

Digitization protects the original by reducing the need to handle it, and it lets a family share and hand down the collection. We scan at preservation-quality resolution, keep faithful copies rather than heavily processed images, and organize everything with a clear finding aid so a relative can tell what each file is years from now. You receive a digital archive that is actually navigable, not a folder of unlabeled scans.

How we handle facts and sources

The same discipline applies to the research itself. We do not treat a claim as true because it is written on a form or repeated in a family story.

• Every confirmed fact carries a citation to its source: the repository, record group, series, and a stable reference where one exists.
• We rank sources honestly. A primary record from the National Archives carries more weight than an undated family note, and we treat unverified materials as unconfirmed until an independent source supports them.
• We do not cite unreliable sources such as open community wikis in a finished report.
• We leave gaps as gaps. When the evidence does not support a detail, we say so rather than guess.

Privacy is part of the standard

Your family's materials and the research we do are private. They are never merged into public content, never sold, and never shared beyond the work you have asked for. What you send us stays yours.

Why this matters

A military heritage project is only as good as the care behind it. Cheap enclosures, careless handling, or research that guesses at units and awards produce something that looks finished but quietly loses or misstates the history. Our standards exist so that the record we hand back is accurate, preserved, and worthy of being passed down.