North East Historical Society looks to publicize the past

NORTH EAST — There’s a staircase in the back of the NorthEast-Millerton Library where not many library visitors go. It’s off-limits except by appointment, but the contents of that floor, which serves as the archives room for the North East Historical Society, are about to get a lot more public.

The two-person archival team for the historical society, Archives Manager Mary Howard and assistant Louise Black, have been working for last two years on taking the physical contents of the society’s archives and entering them into a free digital database, which will soon be available online. Those items range from letters and photographs to antique machinery, glasses and clothing. The database would allow anyone worldwide to access information and documents leading back to genealogical records as well as a history of houses and neighborhoods in the area and other historical information.

The North East Historical Society was started in the early 1970s and has since amassed an overwhelming amount of data. Howard estimates there are approximately 500,000 individual items in the archives.

When Howard realized that the need to digitize the society’s documents, she set about organizing fundraisers for a project she knew would not be inexpensive. Thousands of dollars were eventually raised to buy “state of the art equipment,†including a large-screen laptop, archival database software and a scanner. It was then just a matter of entering the data into the computer — easier said than done.

Cataloguing each individual item takes about 15 minutes, Howard said. For exampl, an old letter would involve the actual scanning of the document as a high-resolution image that can be examined in detail on a computer screen. It then must be categorized according to a number of criteria, all of which can be searched via key words in the database’s search engine.

“It’s nitty gritty work,†explained historical society President Ralph Fedele, “and a very detailed job that’s done without anybody seeing it. It’s important for our archival gang to be recognized. What an amazing process!â€

The continued support of the NorthEast-Millerton Library, as well as advice from other area historical societies, has been crucial to the success of the archives team, which has set April 1 of 2010 as the possible date to move the archives online. Once the database is up, new entries can be added in at any time, and the historical society can continue working toward digitizing its entire catalogue.

“One person can’t do all this,†Howard was quick to say, estimating that about 100 items have been entered into the new database so far. “We’d definitely like to recruit people, whether it was for data entry, photocopying, scanning or something with the oral history. All of those jobs go into making these [historical] items accessible.â€

Anyone interested in helping out with the archiving process, donating items for the digital archives or just looking through the archives themselves can contact Howard at 518-789-0182 or by e-mail at nehsarchives@gmail.com. Access to the archives room is by appointment only.

“The purpose of a historical society is not only to preserve the history but to make that history accessible to all sectors of the public,†Howard explained. “Our archives are in just one tiny little room that would be impossible to navigate unless I was there to help you. The best solution is to create virtual access to it.â€