Scanning

Yesterday and today, I am working to scan the entire collection of historical photography for the Hyde Park Free Library. There is a plethora of images, documenting various areas of town. I'm making the transition from analog material to digital, as a part of the efforts to collect material for the project.

The photographs have been previously archived. To identify each image, they gave it a letter and number ID. P-37 or JRFL-272. My guess is that these reference people. Will have to dig further into this.

While scanning, I continue to think about who is documenting the life in Hyde Park now? At some point an individual put effort into collecting these images and had the forsight to donate them to the library for safe keeping. My guess is that this is no longer the case. Images are property and they are private. That is until they are given over to some public institution. Hmmm - I'm hoping that I can fill in material from this collection to the present. That is the major hurdle of this effort.

Maybe this is now the job of Flickr? I'm going to have to do some searching on the web for images. Why not go to Flickr and talk to them about local history collections???

Community Workshops

As this project continues to develop, I realized that I need to continue to make contact with the community. I cannot just be me sitting behind a table and waiting for the people to show up. So, I've been making every effort to engage the community by going to meeting and following up on exchanges.

The last example of this is a workshop that I am giving at the Hyde Park Free Library this weekend. Entitled - Saving your Memories: Digital Archiving your images, I'm going to show people how to best save their fragile materials so that future generations can see them. This primarily means showing people what standards are best for scanning images and then the best way to store those images.

This will take place monthly until the final project at the Drive In.

Here are the details

Saving your Memories: Digital Archiving your images
1-2pm
Hyde Park Free Library
2 Main St.
Hyde Park, NY
12538
845-229-7791

Camera's in the Community

One idea that came out of conversations recently with Greg Callahan at the Hyde Park Library was to make cameras available for people to document town life.

Last week I approached a locally owned and operated business in Hyde Park, Molloys Pharmacy, about the donation of several disposable camera to make this idea happen. Molloys and its owner Bill Irwin, being a vital business leader in the community, has graciously given a donation of 20 cameras to begin working on this part of the project.

I will be handing those out at my usual post on Saturday mornings at the farmers market. I hope that I might get the Hyde Park Townsman to do a little article on this aspect of the project.

Funding Support

I recently had a meeting with Steven Mann and Stephanie Mauri of the Dutchess County Historical Society. They were both very excited about the project and gave me several great sources for information. The Historical Society has written a letter of support and given a financial donation to help move the project forward. My great thanks goes out to them.

I also just received notice that I am a recipient of a NYFA SOS grant. This some of money allows me to continue my efforts to digitize material and cover the cost of some equipment.

Some Video - Carl Grieco

Off and On

As typical, remembering to post to the blog is not my forte. So many things have been taking place in the last month that I don't know where to begin.

I have been talking quite extensively with Pasty Costello of the Hyde Park Historical Society. Her knowledge of Hyde Park, past and present, is significant and I hope to be working with them more in the next few weeks. I understand that there is a file full of photos that need to be archived and I hope to help with that effort.

Last week I spoke with Steven Mann and Stephanie Mauri at the Dutchess County Historical Society. In talking with them, I got a understanding of Hyde Park and Staatsburg as it relates to Dutchess County. They have also are willing to provide support and put me in touch with their members. I look forward to this association.

Finally, this past Saturday was my first day at the Hyde Park Farmers Market. I will now be spending my Saturday mornings meeting and talking with people there instead of at the Library. This will be a much more public way of connecting with the community.

A night at the Drive In

As the Hyde Park Drive In Theater has opened for the season, I went over last Sunday to see a film. The comic hero cliffhanger, Ironman, was showing in the early slot and I very much enjoyed seeing the movie from the comfort of my car and at the concession stand. Though, I was more interested in the people at the space and the site than anything else.

I had an amazing time. Met with Barry Horowitz, the gentleman that runs the drive in. His family has been running the space since the 50's and he was very excited to here about my efforts with the project.

I also spoke to Ida, the woman who runs the concession stand. She also expressed great interest in the project and was willing to donate some material.

My efforts continue to come across interesting people like Barry and Ida, who make Hyde Park extremely interesting.