Digital Archiving

(Under Development)

As a library, one of our missions is to archive information. That includes your personal family history, wish may be vanishing into an abyss of obsolescence. The current format is a digital format, which you can save on a hard drive, a thumb drive, an SD card, a smartphone, or a cloud service.

What We Can Convert

Vinyl Records

Our vinyl record player can play records and record them directly to a USB thumb drive.

Plug the power adapter into the wall and connect it to the turntable. Turn the volume knob to the right to turn it on and increase the volume. Place the record on the platter and select the desired speed (33/45/78) according to the type of record. If you are using a 45 RPM record, use the adapter located to the left of the pivot of the tone arm.

Open the tone arm clip to release the tone arm. Push the lift lever backward to raise the tone arm and gently move the tone arm to the desired position over the record. If Auto Stop is turned on, the turntable will spin when the arm is moved toward the record. Push the lift lever forward to lo the tone arm slowly onto the desired position on the record to begin playing the record.

Plug in your USB stick into the USB port. Press and hold the REC button until the status indicator flashes to begin recording. Press and hold the REC button until the status indicator stops flashing to stop the recording.

Cassette Tapes

Our cassette player can play cassettes to an external speaker through an audio jack or record through a USB connection to a computer. Free third-party software (such as Audacity) is required for recording to an audio file.

CDs

CDs can be formatted to play music in a CD player or store files for access on a computer. Either format can be updated to a digital file. Digital files on the CD can be copied to a hard drive directly. Audio CDs can be converted to digital files using free third-party software (such as CDex).

Photos, Film Negatives, and Slides

Any desktop scanner can convert your printed pictures into a digital format, but our scanner can also convert and restore your film negatives and slides. The scanner connects to a laptop. The software for the scanner () handles the conversion and restoration.

Note: This works with developed film. Do not open unprocessed film outside of a dark room.

The software for our scanner is available for free (EpsonScan) and tutorials for the 3D scanner are available from the Epson website.

8 mm and Super 8 Film

VHS Tapes

DVDs

Floppy Disks

Ideas for Lesson Plans and Programming

Digital Archive Showcase

Setting: classroom, 5-10 students

Duration: 1 hour

Items to provide:

Items for participants to bring in:

You have that box of old home movies and vinyl records collecting dust in the attic, don't you? But you don't want to hand over your precious memories to an expensive service that can take months. Bring them in and we can show you how to convert them yourself at no cost!

Start by describing the history of

Digital Archivist

Setting: individual activity

Duration: indefinite

Items to provide:

Items for participants to bring in: