The McArdle Notebooks “Henry Arthur McArdle was born in 1836, the year in which Texas declared its independence and experienced its legendary defeat at the Alamo and victory at San Jacinto. During the Civil War, McArdle joined the Confederacy as a draftsman. Later in the war, he joined the staff of General Robert E. Lee as a mapmaker. While working with Hood's Texas Brigade veterans to research his painting Lee in the Wilderness, McArdle became interested in Texas history. McArdle and his family moved to San Antonio, where he set up a studio and began a series of portraits and action canvases associated with Texas subjects. Dawn at the Alamo and The Battle of San Jacinto became Henry McArdle's legacy. The painstaking detail of the paintings was reflected in his exhaustive research. Ruskin McArdle, the son of the artist, had compiled his father's massive research and had it bound into two huge ledgers, one for each of the paintings. In 1929, he gave these ledgers to the state for deposit in the Texas State Library. Officially entitled, "McArdle Companion Battle Paintings," they became known simply as the "McArdle Notebooks." Packed with letters, notes, and photographs, the McArdle Notebooks are among the most historically significant treasures of the Texas State Library and Archives.”
The site itself, an online exhibit by the Texas State Library and Archives, is relatively well done, and while sometimes the layout is a bit confusing, the site includes a page devoted to educating the viewer on how to properly navigate.
With over 231 items in the exhibit, I would venture to say that everything the repository had was digitized, if at all possible.
The metadata is quite scanty. Most of the time all that is given is the title of the material, which often includes the author of the work. Year, subject, medium, and description of the images are rare. The metadata for the collection as a whole is elucidated a bit more, as the introduction to the exhibit gives a relatively extensive history of the author-artist, the provenance of the collection, and the physical condition of the items.
"A decision was made early on to preserve the historic binding rather than to debind the notebooks. But how then would the books be handled in order to make digital copies of the hundreds of pages? Using a flatbed scanner was out of the question; the books could never withstand the constant handling and strain. Digital photography would have enabled high-resolution color digitization of the volumes, but unfortunately had to be ruled out because of cost considerations. A compromise was reached with a decision to use a Minolta PS7000 book scanner, which allowed the notebooks to be opened face-up with good support for the spine and weight of the pages. Each page of each item was captured in a black and white 300 dpi TIFF image. For purposes of web display, these images were then resaved as 72 dpi JPG images. For a handful of images on which color was essential, such as images of flags, careful use was made of a flatbed scanner to produce both a 300 dpi TIFF and a 72 dpi JPG. Overall, we were pleasantly surprised at the performance of the book scanner in digitizing such a wide variety of challenging material as found in the McArdle Notebooks. Unfortunately, there were some materials that did not digitize well. In printed materials, some 19th century fonts proved stubbornly resistant to clear digital rendering. For handwritten letters and manuscripts, those written in a light hand gave unsatisfactory results. In all cases, the best possible image was captured using the capabilities of the book scanner.” Some images are larger than others, offering a size of 700 x 1100 pixels, while others are a bit smaller, at 200 x 300 pixels. Lacking in this exhibit is the ability to enlarge the images to examine small details.
“This web site is designed to make these fragile rarities available for both the serious researcher and for the general public,” the site claims. However, if I personally were researching Texas history or McArdle, this exhibit alone would not be entirely satisfying. The poor digital quality of some of the manuscripts makes them very difficult to read, compounded with the fact that there is no way to magnify for further detail. This site is probably best for non-extensive research, or simply for personal enrichment purposes.
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