Entries Tagged 'microfilm & Microfiche' ↓

Gary McAulay was kneeling on the floor of a small storage space while he flipped through yellowed pages of an old Manhattan Beach newspaper.

One large volume he’d pulled from a shelf contained 1916 copies of the defunct Manhattan Beach News, which in those days covered “interesting local events of the week” and “record business” for a hotel.

A ladder was propped up behind McAulay as he read headlines in the cramped room surrounded by cinder-block walls and lined with shelves. They held framed photographs, a bound book of the city’s original ordinances and scores of copies of newspapers that have covered the town over the years, including the Manhattan Beach Pilot, Messenger and Wave.

“They’re old, they’re fragile … they’re crumbling,” McAulay said of the publications. “Essentially we have 100 years of newspapers. the history of Manhattan Beach is in these papers.”

Some day, the lifelong South Bay resident and board member of the Manhattan Beach Historical Society hopes the public will be able to leaf through the volumes much like he did, but in a comfortable space with controlled access and seating at the town’s new library.

McAulay made the request earlier this month at a meeting organized by the city and county to provide an update on the library project – a 21,500-square-foot building that will replace the 12,188-square-foot structure the county operates near City Hall.

Local historian and fellow historical society board member Jan Dennis said she has for years pursued the same goal – to create a library resource room dedicated to local historical collections.

Dennis, a former mayor who has written six books about the town, said she’d be willing to donate pieces from her own collection, which includes photographs, original city maps, budget documents and a 1915 telephone book with names of Manhattan Beach’s original residents, along with their occupations.

Dennis said some of her materials – which she makes available today to researchers willing to sit at her dining room table – came from trash bins she got permission to look through outside the old City Hall, when it was being demolished. (Damaged in a 1971 earthquake, the building was torn down that year after 55 years of service, according to one of her town histories.)

Dennis said she’s been approached about possibly sending her collection to California State University, Dominguez Hills but that she isn’t ready to do so.

“There’s a lot of good reason why a resource room is needed here in town,” Dennis said. “History is the backbone of any community.”

McAulay said it was about a year ago that the society moved its newspaper collection from a 1905 beach cottage the organization operates as a museum in Polliwog Park to the storage area. It’s essentially a closet space connected to the park’s former restroom building, and provided a safer alternative for storing newspapers and other paper materials than the wood cottage, McAulay said.

“Needless to say, it’s really, really dry,” he said of the old red house. “As a board member, I started to get a little worried about it.”

He and society board President Stephen Meisenholder said they are grateful the city has provided the society with the additional space. It’s locked and the materials are secure, and Meisenholder said the cinder-block walls help control the temperature of the room (although not necessarily humidity).

At the recent meeting concerning the new library, county Librarian Margaret Donnellan Todd raised concerns about providing the proper temperature controls – along with the appropriate staffing – when McAulay broached the subject of the historical archives.

While Todd said the library has and will continue to offer a local history collection – many of the town’s early publications can be viewed on microfilm, for instance – she also explained that personnel costs do not involve having an archivist on staff, and that a room with climate-controlled conditions was not planned.

“I don’t ever want to accept a collection I cannot properly take care of,” Todd said to McAulay.

But she did offer to meet with him to discuss the request in more detail and suggested that grant money could be available to scan and catalog various materials for a digital archive.

Todd could not be reached for further comment last week.

Earlier this year, the city of Torrance completed a five-year, $60,000 effort to digitize old copies of the Torrance Herald and Torrance Press – made possible in partnership with the local historical society and the Friends of the Torrance Library.

McAulay would welcome the chance to create a digital database from the newspapers the society has in storage, he said.

But both he and Dennis also still see the benefit of being able to go to the library to view hard copies of materials that have helped shape or that document Manhattan Beach’s history.

“There are things in here that I know have never come out because who looks at these?” McAulay said, gesturing to the old newspapers and bound city ordinances in storage. “These are not merely documents, but they’re artifacts.”

The Alger Hiss trials were a result of the “Red Scare.” This is also

known by people as the fear of communism within the United States. During

this period of time people were more concerned about themselves and afraid

of everything that they do not know or do not understand. because they do

not know what communism is and because they are being told that it is a

very horrible thing to participate in they do not want to have anything to do

with communism and are afraid of whomever is a participate. This is a story

of a man whom wanted to support the way he thought because he wanted to

make the world a better place, and when he did eventually decide that

communism wasn’t what he wanted to pursue then people agitated him and

made him become prosecuted for letting go what he once found so important

to hold onto. He let it go and we blamed him, when he could have held on to

his beliefs. Its not right to put someone on trial because of what they decided

to let go. When someone gives up their rights from another country to join

America and to become an American citizen we don’t prosecute them for

what they were before. That was their past countries problem. We shouldn’t

be allowed to place blame onto people who have decided to change from bad

to good because they will more than likely decide that because they are

being blamed then they won’t change.

the man by the name of Alger Hiss arrived in the United States and

shortly after on August 3, 1948 a reporter walked up to him and told Hiss

that Whittaker Chambers was accusing him of being a communist. Alger

Hiss was the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Whittaker Chambers was the senior editor of Times magazine. However Hiss

did admit to his fifteen years of being a communist he said he stopped

believing in 1937. then he told the Secretary of the State, Adolph a. Berle

Jr. that there were communists in the United States government. Hiss once

being a State department official organized several high level diplomatic

meetings that helped to form the United Nations. Does this sound like the

type of guy that wants to harm America and its people? no it doesn’t a

person who doesn’t like America wouldn’t help make the United Nations.

When Chambers essentially told on Hiss saying he was a

communist he said that he himself was a communist and he gave it up and

that Hiss had not. When the man by the name of Chambers told this Hiss

said that no man by the name of Chambers meant anything to him. He did

not know anyone by the name of Chambers. However Hiss did say that the

man who claimed to be Whittaker Chambers did look familiar to him but as

a man he once knew by the name of George Crosley. He then asked the man

to open his mouth because the man by the name of Crosley had horrible

teeth and that’s how he remembered him. Before the trial Hiss’ attorney

asked Chambers if he could supply any evidence that Hiss was a communist

and he went to his nephews house in Brooklyn new York and brought an

envelope that contained forty-three typed copies of State document reports ,

five rolls of microfilm, and four memos in Hiss’ handwriting.

Alger Hiss was guilty.

Communism is no more defensible than National Socialism.

Question by Sally A: how do I convert Microfiche to a digital format?My mother is a long-time amateur genealogist and has a collection of microfiche containing various genealogy records. her reader is old and pretty large. She’s looking to move within the next couple months and would like to get rid of it. However, if she does she’ll lose access to her microfiche.

I already plan on slowly converting her collection of old family slides to digital and would like to do the same with her microfiche.

Is this possible? I haven’t been able to turn up anything on a Google search regarding this kind of conversion aside from a few services. I know it’s possible to convert slides and other microforms.

Best answer:

Answer by wendy cMan, I remember those days. I bought a reader from an auction some 25 yrs back, when it was “the thing” to do.My guess is that microfiche are exactly the same as a slide. a slide can be converted to a photo type image, thus stored electronically. It is a type of negative. Just like a picture, I doubt that it can be used as a text type file that can be edited.Check with some of the photo labs like Walgreens. If you have a scanner, you also can scan it.. then do a “reverse” image like negative to print. I believe you will then have an image that can be zoomed, just like a photo.. but it won’t be workable with text functions like search or editing the text.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!