During this past year Joan Shumaker of the Nunda Historical Society, which is near Letchworth State Park, shared this very unusual website with me www.fultonhistory.com This site provides access to many New York State newspapers, historic NYS documents, photographs, and post cards to assist with your research and genealogy projects. Surprisingly, there are many small newspapers included with those of our major cities. Joan realized Tom Tryniski, webmaster of the site, was seeking newspapers to add to the collection. The Nunda Historical Society had their newspaper collection digitized and so I decided to follow a good lead and set about getting The Fredonia Censor digitized. I contacted him and agreed to send just a couple of our reels of microfilm to him for a start. Once he received the reels and tried them out he determined they were to badly worn from use to make them searchable. I had to find microfilm reels that were good enough to create digital documents from and thankfully Sue Wilkes, Head of Circulations, at SUNY Fredonia’s Reed Library was willing to loan me the reels from the college. Every week or so I went to the college to borrow about 10 reels and mailed them on to Tom Tryniski which he scanned and returned to me. Once the entire collection of The Fredonia Censor was scanned by Tom he sent a hard drive to me which I transferred to our own hard drive. These files are pdf files which were OCR’d (word recognized),
with an index to make them searchable. Tom also puts these newspapers into his online data base and we can direct researchers by linking our website: www.barkermuseum.net with www.funtonhistory.com . Having The Fredonia Censor on-line and searchable is most valuable to researchers who are not in the Fredonia area. For those of us in the area, having searchable pdf files of The Fredonia Censor on computers at the Museum and possibly at the college since Jeremy Linden, Archivist of Reed Library's Special Collections expressed interest in gaining a copy, is truly a great convenience. The total cost for this project was the cost of sending the film and purchasing the hard drive. Myself and Joan Shumaker are encouraging other organizations to make their newspaper archives more accessible by taking advantage of the service Tom Tryniski so generously and expertly provides. Tom’s contact information is, E-mail: tryniski@fultonhistory.com or Phone: 315-402-2327
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
One Room School House Project
Last August an interested individual put together a proposal for the "Establishment of a One Room School House at the Barker Historical Museum." The establishment and implementation of One Room School Houses in the United States and around the world is a documented success. One room school houses exist in Historical Museums, at Universities and as stand alone exhibits. The nostalgia associated with the movement makes it easy to generate community support, voluntary participation and donations.
The creation of a One Room School House at the Barker Historical Museum would be consistent with the Mission Statement of the Museum. The Mission Statement includes articles on promoting educational programs, interpretive exhibits, conducting on-going research and working with other scholarly, community and student organizations. A One Room School House Program would be completely consistent with these articles.
This proposal deals with the following areas:
• Turning the current Children's Museum into a physical space of a One Room School House would require the acquisition of desks once used in a one room school house as well as making minor changes to the space aesthetically to create the look of a one room school house.
• A cadre of volunteers to donate their time and effort to restore the physical space.
• A cadre of retired teachers who would be volunteers manning the operations of the One Room School House
The benefits of the One Room School House would be numerous. It would be an instant draw into the Museum. It would be attractive to both the schools in the county and the local SUNY College. It would greatly increase attendance at the museum and community participation.
One of the goals of the Museum in the past has been to increase volunteer participation in the Museum. Some of the volunteers enlisted in the One Room School House Project could possibly be interested in general Museum operations such as manning the floor during operational hours and general tasks.
Since preparing the physical space and manning the School House would be done by volunteers, the cost to the Library would be minimal. Donations of school house materials would be expected from the community. This proposal does not underestimate the scope of this project but believes that it would galvanize the community and the staff of the Museum in a very positive manner that would breathe new life into our programs and mission to the people we serve.
Currently the Museum has located 25 desks once used in one room school house, but, alas, the desks are located at the Historic Fourth Ward School, Virginia City, Nevada. The Historic Fourth Ward School would happily donate the desks to the Barker, if we cover the cost of shipping. The Barker Museum now needs to raise the cost of shipping the desks (approx. $1,000) to Fredonia, New York. If anyone, you don't need to be a member of the Barker Historical Museum just interested in a community minded project, can help financially please call the Museum at 672-2114.
The creation of a One Room School House at the Barker Historical Museum would be consistent with the Mission Statement of the Museum. The Mission Statement includes articles on promoting educational programs, interpretive exhibits, conducting on-going research and working with other scholarly, community and student organizations. A One Room School House Program would be completely consistent with these articles.
This proposal deals with the following areas:
• Turning the current Children's Museum into a physical space of a One Room School House would require the acquisition of desks once used in a one room school house as well as making minor changes to the space aesthetically to create the look of a one room school house.
• A cadre of volunteers to donate their time and effort to restore the physical space.
• A cadre of retired teachers who would be volunteers manning the operations of the One Room School House
The benefits of the One Room School House would be numerous. It would be an instant draw into the Museum. It would be attractive to both the schools in the county and the local SUNY College. It would greatly increase attendance at the museum and community participation.
One of the goals of the Museum in the past has been to increase volunteer participation in the Museum. Some of the volunteers enlisted in the One Room School House Project could possibly be interested in general Museum operations such as manning the floor during operational hours and general tasks.
Since preparing the physical space and manning the School House would be done by volunteers, the cost to the Library would be minimal. Donations of school house materials would be expected from the community. This proposal does not underestimate the scope of this project but believes that it would galvanize the community and the staff of the Museum in a very positive manner that would breathe new life into our programs and mission to the people we serve.
Currently the Museum has located 25 desks once used in one room school house, but, alas, the desks are located at the Historic Fourth Ward School, Virginia City, Nevada. The Historic Fourth Ward School would happily donate the desks to the Barker, if we cover the cost of shipping. The Barker Museum now needs to raise the cost of shipping the desks (approx. $1,000) to Fredonia, New York. If anyone, you don't need to be a member of the Barker Historical Museum just interested in a community minded project, can help financially please call the Museum at 672-2114.
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