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Library digitizing history

The James V. Brown Library trustees on Thursday heard about how the state is moving to digitize its libraries through the PA Scan Project.

“It’s a great way for our libraries to be able to digitize and put into digital form their history and local history,” said June Houghtaling, consultant for the Northcentral Library District.

She said a pilot program was developed with four goals: to promote libraries as trusted repositories for local history and culture, remove financial barriers to digitizing local information, to increase the number of collections of PA photos and documents and to extend digitizing services to material owned by the public.

She said in the spring, a large flatbed scanner was purchased to scan negatives and slides, video capture for VHS tapes, floppy drive and an external hard drive. A laptop and audio capture device were also purchased to digitize audio materials.

“We have to give our libraries some instruction and make it easy for them,” she said.

The number-one priority is for all libraries to digitize their own library history, according to Houghtaling.

“It’s an extremely important thing that sometimes gets overlooked,” she said. “You know, library history, we are part of that history collective.”

Sometimes libraries are architecturally significant, or they started out as another structure before turning into libraries, she said.

She said that local history will need to be preserved.

“Dana (Brigandi) is developing a project here for the James V. Brown Library to digitize their collection … and we intend to use that project as a model for our libraries,” Houghtaling said.

Barbara S. McGary, library executive director, said that 17,352 people visited the library in person during the month of June. The library served 19,572 online during the month and lended 36,418 physical items and 2,369 electronic items for the month.

“In June, we provided 107 programs for families of all ages … and that brought in 2,000 people, just for those programs,” McGary said.

She said out of the 17,352 people who walked into the library during the month, 2,068 people came specifically to participate in the library’s summer programs.

The next meeting will be Sept. 21 at the library. The August meeting was canceled.

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