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The Archival Process

How we preserved, digitized, and cataloged one of jazz's most comprehensive visual records.

Archiving is cultural preservation – providing researchers, educators, and the public access to primary source materials that shape how we understand history. For jazz, it ensures that this era's most vital moments remain documented, accessible, and relevant.

Archivist reviewing Veryl Oakland's jazz photography negatives during cataloging

In 2021, we partnered with Jessie de la Cruz, an archivist with 17 years of experience, to figure out how to catalog this collection. Jessie previously served as the founding Archivist and Digital Collections Manager at the Clyfford Still Museum – where she built a comprehensive archive now accessible to researchers – and as Music and Sound Archivist and Assistant Director of the American Music Research Center (AMRC) at CU Boulder.

Over the course of five years, Jessie worked with her team and Veryl’s to complete the archiving process – what follows is an overview of what was accomplished.

PHASE 1: Cataloging + Rehousing

5 YEARS | 2021 – 2026

Jessie and her team reviewed every negative, slide, and contact sheet, working directly with Veryl – and his notations across the collection – to determine core information for each shoot:

  • Musicians and performers
  • Specific dates and years
  • Venues and locations
  • Context: festival, magazine assignment, concert, etc.

This rich data was input into a comprehensive spreadsheet, and simultaneously, all negatives and slides were moved into archival-quality sleeves, boxes, and storage – a process called "rehousing."

PHASE 2: High Resolution Digitization

2 YEARS | 2024 – 2026

Rather than selectively digitize, we digitized all 80,000 negatives and slides at high resolution. This approach ensures:

  • Complete preservation of the archive in digital form
  • Direct linking between specific images and their metadata
  • No image left behind or deemed "unimportant" at the time of scanning

This was an exciting phase, as every few months, thousands of newly scanned images emerged for viewing – many never before seen in detail by Veryl himself.

CURRENT PHASE: Metadata Enrichment + Curatorial Review

2026 – ONGOING

Veryl is now reviewing all digitized "lots" (groupings of negatives), verifying parent data accuracy, and adding his lived knowledge, including:

  • Contextual notes about what made a shoot significant
  • Stories and memories attached to specific moments
  • Corrections and additional identification of people or places

This phase ensures the archive isn't just searchable and clean – but that it's meaningful and grounded in the photographer's firsthand experience.

Interested in sourcing images, or licensing photographs from the archive?

ACCESS THE ARCHIVE