November 20th, 2008 Brian Herzog
Something new my library is undertaking is a Town-Wide History Project. Our goal is to create a master index of all of the historical records in town, so we’ll know where different types of information is stored. Phase 2 will be preservation and digitization of as much of this as possible.
Good idea? Yes. Lot of work? More than we realize.
We expect this process to take years, so we’re trying to start slow and small so as not to get overwhelmed. We’re also trying to document everything as we go along, so we’ll have a record of how we went about doing this, and when certain things were accomplished. Since other libraries might be interested in the same sort of project, here’s our progress so far (I’ll occasionally post updates, too).
Our Process
I’m told that this was tried about eight years ago in Chelmsford, but was abandoned less than a year after it started. The library was approached a few months ago to try again, and I immediately took to the idea. A comprehensive local history finding aid would be very valuable at the reference desk.
In addition to library staff, we also have a volunteer who has been helping with a lot of the work. She’s been responsible for most of the data entry and envelope stuffing, and will also be helping when it comes to visiting each site to do an inventory. Without her, most of these steps would have been much more difficult.
- Meet to organize project - A project like this will have a lot of meetings. Initially library staff met with our volunteers to define the scope and goal of the project, and to create a rough timeline
- Identify groups in town with historical records/artifacts - In our case, we had a few resources that helped with this. Since a similar project was begun a few years ago, some of their records still existed, including a list of the organizations involved. Another tool is our Community Information database, which lists non-profit groups in town. My volunteer also found official Town departments and boards which might have historical records
- Compile a list of groups - The volunteer took these various lists and created a master contact list as an Excel spreadsheet, with just name, address, phone, email, website and contact name
- Contact the groups - While the volunteer was compiling the spreadsheet of names, we were also drafting a letter that would introduce the project to these groups, and a preliminary survey, which would be sent along with the letter. The goal of the survey was to give library staff an idea of how much materials each group had, what kind of shape it was in, and where it was located:
To mail them, we did a simple mail-merge between Word and Excel, and enclosed a stamped return envelope. We also enclosed a list of all the groups contacted, in the hopes that the recipients will be able to suggests organizations we didn’t think of.
Also in the cover letter, we invited everyone to a meet-and-greet type introductory meeting, scheduled about a month in advance
- Compile the returned surveys - As the surveys were returned, we compiled the answers into the same spreadsheet we had begun. We used a different worksheet, and kept track of who replied, if the contact information had changed, and how they answered the questions. On another worksheet, we aggregated the answers for all groups, so we’d know how many map collections were in town, how many were available online, etc.
At this point we have outgrown Excel, and need a database for our needs, not just a simple spreadsheet. I’m going to have to find a tool to accomplish this before the project grows more, because the less data we have to rekey, the better.
- Introductory meeting - We wanted our first face-to-face meeting not be a lecture by library staff, but more of a conference, where all participates in the group were equal. Library staff did lead the meeting to give an overview of what we had in mind, but once things got going the other attendees really began to take ownership of the idea and see a role for their organization.
This is as far as we are in the process right now - which is to say, the very, very beginning. The consensus at the meeting (which was just last night) was to invite a speaker to give an overview on what kind of materials are historically-important, and what groups can do to prepare for an on-site inventory. The groups also wanted to see examples of what the end result will look like (for our project, we’re using communities like Westford, Sudbury and Ipsiwch as models).
We’re going to plan that for late January/early February, and then start scheduling site visits for initial inventories. How those first few site visits go will shape how we proceed, and help define who does what. Eventually we will apply for a grant, to help with the preservation and digitization aspects.
It’s an exciting project, just massive. I’m happy that the town is behind such a project, and that it is being coordinated by the library. Local history questions are often the most difficult to answer, and a project like this will go a long way to ensuring this information is both available and accessible to researchers and the curious alike.
Tags: archive, digitization, historic, history, libraries, Library, preservation, project, public, town, town-wide See Also
Posted under Library, Resources | 2 Comments »
August 14th, 2008 Brian Herzog
The library in my hometown has a blog, which I read because it’s well done and because it’s a way for me to stay connected with where my family lives.
I particularly enjoyed one recent post. Someone found a photo in the library’s historical archive that had been later doctored for use in a promotional book.
Check the original post for bigger photos. It is interesting to see how the photo, circa 1900, could be altered so well - as opposed to some of the bad work being done now with Photoshop.
This shows that fun can come from library archive, especially photo archives. Also, too, the subject of the photo is interesting. It’s the dock of Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, OH. And I am always amazed at how dressing nicely was just a matter of course in that era. People at Cedar Point don’t dress like that anymore.
Tags: archive, archives, blog, blogs, cedar point, historical, libraries, Library, oh, ohio, old, photo, photos, photoshop, public, sandusky See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 2 Comments »
March 18th, 2008 Brian Herzog
In the wake of the recent announcements of companies ditching DRM* as a mechanism to control access to audio files, the New York Times is reporting that Sports Illustrated is opening up access to its entire archive.
The Times did this itself not too long ago, as did Atlantic Monthly, but SI’s project is supposed to go a step further - not just text, but they’re making available their photographs and video and everything. They’re also including a handy search interface that lets people search by athlete, team, coach, year, etc.
Hopefully, more and more periodicals will start making their archives available, too (after all, Information Wants To Be Free). This of course would dramatically change the relationships libraries have with long-time vendors like EBSCO, NewsBank and Proquest, but information is information. If all the information is free, then the real value-added piece becomes the interface.
By the way, I found about this through The Huffington Post. I’ve also read recently about a few more free online resources:
*update: OverDrive just announced (at PLA, anyway) that they, too, are finally moving in the right direction. In June they’ll start offering mp3 files - which, best of all, will be iPod-compatible. And they’ll finally come out with a Mac interface, too. Read the entire announcement [pdf, 70kb].
Tags: archive, archives, free, ipod, libraries, Library, mp3, overdrive, pluc, research, resource, Resources See Also
Posted under Library, Resources | 1 Comment »
March 13th, 2008 Brian Herzog
I am giving a workshop in early April on using flickr. It’s the last in a digital photography workshop series at my library, because, after people learn how to use and take nice pictures with their digital camera, the flickr workshop will show them one option for doing something with those digital pictures.
I thought I’d get a jump on preparing for it, by compiling a list of websites I’d like to mention in addition to flickr - not just online photo sharing websites, but websites that let you edit photos, sites that have free archives of photos, etc.
In the process of working on it, it occurred to me that it’d be worthwhile to post it here, too. It’s a long list, but certainly not all-inclusive, so if your favorite isn’t listed here, please share.
Photo Sharing:
Photo Editing:
Image Archives:
Other flickr-related Information:
Also, this list will probably change a bit closer to the workshop.
Tags: archive, editor, editors, libraries, Library, online, photo, photograph, photographs, photos, public, sharing, tool, tools See Also
Posted under Library, Programs, Technology | 9 Comments »
January 12th, 2008 Brian Herzog
Sometimes, even before the patron has said anything, I just know that they are going to qualify for “Reference Question of the Week.”
A couple in their sixties or seventies walked up to the desk, and the wife takes charge:
We just got back from my son’s house, and while we were gone it snowed. I know it, because there’s snow in my yard. What I want you to tell me is how much snow there is. My neighbor told me it snowed on December 13th and again on the 16th, and you have to tell me how much snow it snowed in them storms.
Well, I told her that it would take me some time to find this information, and that I’d call her when I did. I took down her number, and over the course of the next couple hours, searched for some kind of snowfall record in between helping other patrons.
The first place I always try for weather data is NOAA. I tried various searches in Google and restricted to the noaa.gov site, but didn’t have much luck. I did find snowfall monitoring data files, which seemed promising because each file was for a specific month and year, broken down by day, and covered lots of cities in every state. However, the nearest city to this patron’s yard didn’t have data, so that didn’t help.
I also found the National Climatic Data Center, which is the “World’s largest archive of climate data.” However, the free data they offered unfortunately didn’t address this question.
So, I kept searching. I must tried twenty different ways to find this data, from scanning news reports from days after these storms to trying to contact local weather monitoring stations for their data to checking snowfalls at nearby airports. But in every case, either the data was missing, or the station was too far away to extrapolate to this woman’s yard, or the data wasn’t free, or the website seemed too unreliable to even bother with.
Then, happily, a colleague of mine walked by, and I asked her to help me out. I was getting frustrated, and I hoped a new approach to the problem would produce something useful.
We both looked, and found the Weather Underground’s historical data about the same time. This was a wonderful little tool, letting us search by zip code and date. But the “precipitation” listed for that day was much lower than we expected. I remember getting about 8 inches of snow in each storm, but wunderground was reporting 0.81 inches.
Eventually we decided they were reporting “precipitation” as the equivalent of rainfall, not the snow that accumulated. This realization led us on a tangent to see if we could find a formula to convert inches of rain to inches of snow.
Even though the formulas we found actually did convert the wunderground data into snowfall levels close to what we expected, we decided this was still questionable research, at best, and kept on.
And it was then that my colleague found it.
She tried a simple search for “snowfall chelmsford,” and noticed the url of one of the returns was accuweather.com linking in to their current weather report for North Chelmsford. At the bottom of that page was a link to a Past Weather Check.
Although this data only seems to go back one month, it was far enough to cover the two dates the patron provided. And, best of all, it gave both precipitation and snowfall, for our exact zip code.
This came about three hours after the patron originally asked me the question, and with much relief I called her to give her the amounts. Even her response, “yeah, that’s about what my neighbor said” [click] couldn’t dampen my spirits after answering this one (with a tremendous amount of help from a coworker, of course).
But recent-past questions like this are always tough, especially weather questions. It’s easier to find what the weather was like years ago than what it was like a week ago, which just seems wrong to me. But as long as I keep bookmarking these resources, maybe next time the answer will come a bit quicker.
Incidentally, Accuweather.com said we got 10.1″ of snow on the 13th and 7.6″ on the 16th. That means I shoveled 17.7″ that weekend, at my house and at the library.
amount, archive, historical, libraries, library, public, reference question, snow, snowfall, totals, weather
Tags: amount, archive, historical, libraries, Library, public, Reference Question, snow, snowfall, totals, weather See Also
Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources | 5 Comments »
