Accessing Archives Completed Projects
| Institution | Description | |
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Freeport Memorial Library |
The project requested, fulfilled on behalf of the Freeport Memorial Library, was to complete the digitization of Freeport Historical Society and Museum's compact audio cassette collection of oral histories and Freeport band recordings. The collection is made up of forty cassette tapes. Digitized materials included in the Freeport Oral Histories on New York Heritage. |
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Hallockville Museum Farm |
This project involved arranging, describing and digitizing an oral history collection on cassette tapes. This collection contains taped interviews of Suffolk County residents that date from 1972 to 2002. The people found on these recordings discuss farm life, quilting, decoy carving and general life during the late 1890s and into the 1940s. Aside from longtime residents you can also hear people who are descended from Irish, Italian, Polish, Armenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian immigrants who came to Long Island during the early part of the 20th century. You can also hear former staff of the Hallockville Museum Farm. |
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Historical Society of East Rockaway and Lynbrook (HSERL) |
The project that HSERL requested was the total reorganization of their archives and storage space residing on the top floor of the Lynbrook Public Library. For decades, HSERL has amassed donations from Lynbrook residents, collectors, library staff and the Lynbrook Village Hall. This partnership is the first time in HERSL’s history that an archivist has had the opportunity to fully organize these donations. Digitized materials included in the Lynbrook Audio Recordings on New York Heritage. |
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Long Island Maritime Museum (LIMM) | The project that LIMM requested was to digitize as many of the oral histories recorded on audio cassettes from their Baymen Oral History Collection. The collection contains approximately 440 audio cassettes. The Project Archivist performed quality control to assure the recordings were audible while capturing descriptive metadata. Problems found include missing pressure pads,sticky shed syndrome, tape breakage, audible hiss, and low audio signals. Each tape was listed on a new inventory, given a new unique identifier and upon completion of seventy five oral histories, recommendations were made to LIMM to stabilize the stored cassettes. |
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Long Island Museum |
The main goal of our partnership was to organize and re-house the archival materials on set of shelves. Over the years, there have been a handful of projects that were started but time didn’t allow for them to be completed. The project archivist worked through these projects rehousing materials and was able to produce a finding aid. Many items were also digitized and are now available in The Long Island Museum Photograph Collection | New York Heritage (nyheritage.org). The project also created the finding aid for the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, & Carriages (empireadc.org). |
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Manhasset Public Library |
The project archivist digitized twenty-two audio cassette tapes and uploaded those tapes to New York Heritage. The materials can be found in the Manhasset Public Library Oral History Collection (1953-1988) | New York Heritage (nyheritage.org). Compact audio cassette tapes hit the American consumer market around 1969 and because of that technology, this collection contains oral histories prior to that. It was common throughout the 1970s and into the 1990s to duplicate older audio tapes such as reel to reel tapes onto new audio cassettes in order to preserve those older recordings and make them easier to listen to. The oldest oral histories in this collection were recorded in 1953 and capture long-time Manhasset residents discussing life prior to 1900. This oral history collection contains the oldest recorded oral histories on New York Heritage. |
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Northport-East Northport Public Library (NENPL) |
The goal of the project was to have the NENPL map collection organized, the map index updated, accession numbers assigned, and maps scanned in order to be digitally preserved. The Project Archivist reviewed the library map collection and cross checked the inventory against the existing index. Digitized materials included in the Northport-East Northport Library Map Collection on New York Heritage. |
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Oceanside Library |
The project archivist consulted with the library on how to handle a collection of ½” open reel video tapes. This is video format that is rare, obsolete, highly at-risk for deterioration and needs to be immediately prioritized for digitization. The project archivist researched the issue consulting with preservation specialists on the faculty of New York University. He was able to identify the tapes suffer a common form of deterioration for video tape, sticky shed syndrome. He was able to direct the staff to preservation companies that could properly handle these tapes. |
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Old Westbury Gardens |
The goal of this project was to digitize collections from their archive that had previously been difficult to view, difficult to access, and difficult to digitize. The project archivist was able to digitize slides, various sizes of photographic negatives, oversized photographs, family correspondence, documents, a scrapbook, a photo album, a video tape, and some cassette tapes. These new digital files offer a new and fresh look at the Phipps family and their way of life through that material. By the end of the project, they received 2,710 new digital files/110 GBs. Digitized materials included the Phipps Home Movies which are now available on New York Heritage. |
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Southold Historical Museum (SHM) |
The project with SHM was to digitize as many photographs in the Charles H. Meredith Collection as possible to increase accessibility of the collection. The collection holds more than 30,000 photographs and negatives and is a cornerstone of SHM’s archival holdings. A portion of the scanned images were then to be selected and uploaded to a newly created web page on the New York Heritage website. Digitized materials included in the Charles H. Meredith Collection on New York Heritage. |
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SUNY Old Westbury |
In this project, the archivist worked on creating a finding aid for a collection of materials. He inventoried 187 audio and video tapes. Because of this inventory was rediscovery process for the institutions, staff at the library and the projected archivist selected 31 audio cassette tapes to digitize and add to New York Heritage. These were linked to the finding aid on Empire ADC. SUNY OW now has 29 hours and 33 minutes and new audio files to listen to and enjoy. These recordings will enrich the collections and become excellent research tools. |
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Three Villages Historical Society (TVHS) |
The initial focus of the project was identifying, organizing and rehousing collections located in a storage closet. However, the focus shifted quickly when it turned out that accessing both the art closet and the collections room on the second floor were impossible. The Project Archivist physically moved items in those collection spaces to ensure staff could access the stored collection. Once these spaces were put in order, the Project Archivist added shelf numbers and corrected collection locations in their archives management spreadsheet. A finding aid was uploaded to Empire ADC for the Melville Family Papers and digitized materials included in the Melville Family Papers on New York Heritage. |
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Walt Whitman Birthplace Association |
The main goal of this project was to complete an inventory of the original and framed artwork and enter the items into their collection database in Past Perfect by building a spreadsheet with categories including, but are not limited to, accession number, home location, summary, dimensions, date, media, medium, and artist. The project archivist was also able to complete two other projects. The first of two projects was to finish scanning the slides that WWBA had in their collection. The second project was the reel to reel audio tapes that WWBA had in their collection. The tapes were from the 1950s and 1960s of Whitman scholars reciting and discussing Whitman poetry. Digitized materials are available in Walt Whitman Birthplace Association | New York Heritage (nyheritage.org). |