IMAX of the 1890s

I have been reading Martin Gilbert's biography of Winston Churchill and have been immersed for several weeks in Victorian England. When this short video became available from the MoMA it really was a perfect supplement to my reading. It is a sampling of restored film clips from the 1890s shot in 68mm at 30 frames per second by the British arm Biograph film company. The images are startlingly crisp, fluid, and clear. For me, they affirm the reality and humanity of that time like no other medium.

Passive Art Ed

Have been posing some questions and observations on my Picturing America posters to provide some exposure and awareness of art appreciation and fundamentals.

Thinkology

This week's walk-in observe and think question at ACSLIB:

From the NEWSEUM

Great lesson plans, resources, and info-graphics from the folks at the Newseum. Many thanks to my DCMO SLS colleagues for sharing this.

Centennial Revisited

I have begun scanning the Afton Historical Society's publication, "Centennial Revisited," at their request. It is a compilation of articles from 1957 that originally appeared in the Afton Enterprise to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Town of Afton. Each article is written by a different Afton citizen!

I believe the Society intends to post the completed scan on their web site  of at the Internet Archive.

World War I Exhibit Overview

Pre-War preparations

Getting together our advertising for our World War I exhibit in the April: handbills, tabletops, postcards.

Open House

Tonight I am featuring a multimedia display to support "Charles Decker Day." Charles, a 1943 graduate of ACS, is being recognized on October 1st for over 40 years of service as our town historian. Our exhibit will include our collection of Afton Historical Calendars, and Historical Minutes, as well as the online versions. We will also be listening to a 2009 audio of Charles speaking with my eighth grade students.

Getting the word out

Made a batch of these hand-out cards for this weekend's Memorial Day crowd at the Afton Museum; pointing the way to the database of Afton Historical Minutes we digitized here at ACSLIB.

Curating our local history

Got the go-ahead from the Afton Historical Society to post their annual historical calendars to the Internet Archive. The calendars document Afton history over a range of themes; from children's clothing to local disasters. We made one  word-searchable digital document from calendars created from 1987-2016 to aid in locating information.

This follows on the heels of our earlier project where we digitized and posted over 900 Afton Historical Minutes to the Internet Archive.

3D to 2D

When I saw Lee Humphrey's elementary art class projects in the hallway, I knew I had to get them for an exhibit in the MS/HS Library. It is a wonderful project. First, students created a 3D "stage set" of a story, then they create a 2D painting from it. What a great way to illustrate the magic that our perception performs every time we see a painting.

Sharing a legacy

Showing Charles Decker, Afton Town Historian, his 25-years-worth of Afton Historical Minutes that our library scanned and converted to a searchable database of 967 articles on the Internet Archive.

More ACS documents at the Internet Archive

I have scanned and added the 1901 Afton Catalogue, The 1925 Afton Catalogue, and the 1931 Aftonian Yearbook to the Internet Archive. They are also posted to the Archives section of our library web page.

I especially like the prologue to the the 1931 Aftonian that states, "It comes with a two-fold purpose, to give practice to boys and girls in English in Afton High School and to show the public what these boys and girls are attempting." It anticipates, or rather sets the precedent for, the "publicly presented knowledge products" that are expected as part of our current Inquiry Learning.

I have done a good thing

Today I learned how to do some real power-lifting with Adobe Acrobat, and I feel great about it.

I used the 'text recognition' feature to convert over 800 Tiff images into word-searchable PDF files; in batches of 100. Then I used the 'combine' feature to consolidated those into one document.

The images were from Charles Decker's 30 years-worth of Afton Historical Minutes that I scanned from newspaper clippings some years ago. This weekend, at his 90th birthday celebration, one of his colleagues was wishing those digital images were searchable. And now they are.

I have posted the searchable document at the Internet Archive where it now resides with earlier efforts to 'tag' individual articles.

As much as anything I have contributed through my duties and opportunities as a librarian, this confluence of community, technology, and resource development stands pretty high on my list.

Happy Birthday, Charles.

Museums

from the New York Times

After spending a day last week at the Roberson Museum investigating how local institutions might support the Common Core, I was more than ready when Thursday's "Museums" insert arrived as part of the New York Times. There were so many articles that illustrate how these centers actively strive to create meaning for patrons: At Play in Skies of Cretaceous Era, After Exhibition, Finding New Uses for Display, Motowns' Link to Civil Rights Movement on Display, Remembering the "Black Fives" of Basketball, Is there a Doctor in the Exhibition?, Warming up to the Culture of Wikipedia , and Entering World of Literature's Great Sleuth. I realize that is NYC we are talking about, but the ideas behind what they are doing and how they are responding to patron needs are applicable to the Southern Tier also.

It is inspiring stuff.

As a footnote, another article; this one in the Sunday Times "T" magazine was written by author Orham Panuk, who argues the virtues of small personal museums that provide period context for the items they present. Interestingly, Pamuk has created "The Museum of Innocence," which exhibits artifacts from his novel of the same title; a neat project idea for students, yes?