The Connecticut Historical Society is Digitizing Historical Footage on the Brink of Being Lost to History
Tasha Caswell was walking between the shelves containing the film collection of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford three years ago when she got a strong whiff of vinegar. Caswell, who is CHS’s research and collections associate, with a background in films and photography, knew immediately what that odor meant: vinegar syndrome.
She alerted the other members of the collections department, and soon afterward they applied for a grant to preserve and digitize the invaluable films — many of them home movies that had been donated through the decades. The result: now the public will be able to see these gems on the Connecticut Digital Archive. The films include Charles Lindbergh visiting Hartford for a parade in July 1927, two months after he flew from New York to Paris, and the wedding of Dr. Benjamin Spock, the noted pediatrician, to Jane Davenport Cheney that same year, in Manchester.
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Filed under: Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Funding, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.