This week Matt and I began scanning one of the scrapbooks! This is the oldest book from Howard’s collection, having been created from 1947 to 1950. When we originally looked through all of the scrapbooks with Dr. French, we noticed that as the years went on each scrapbook became less personalized as each respective PTA historian took on the role of creating year-in-review scrapbooks for the school. This was definitely the most personal out of all the books, having been created by a group of friends who attended Orlando High School! The book was officially authored/compiled by a woman named Patricia Hudson, who is present in multiple photographs alongside her friends. She included things like school and church programs, prom invitations, wedding invitations, and menus from skating nights at the former Coliseum Roller Rink. Pat also included multiple school and city newspapers that contained photos of students, updates from the school sporting teams, and information about various school events.
Looking through the newspapers was one of my favorite parts of the day because they all had old advertisements that were fascinating to comb through. Most of the ads were for local businesses that are no longer around, but I feel like I recognize some of the names I saw so I’ll have to look into those more.
Aside from a few tears or fraying around the edges, the newspapers were in pretty good condition! The scrapbook itself was a different story- pieces of each page would break off every time we tried moving it for photos. It honestly reminded me of confetti. We had to figure out the best way to approach scanning the book and all of its contents without damaging them further, though given the state of the book and how it’s been stored over the years, scanning each page without affecting the book would be impossible. For the previous scrapbook Matt scanned, he used a book cradle that pressed down the pages of the book in order to get a clear photograph without the book closing, however this scrapbook was way too fragile to use that. However, there were many pages with little booklets stapled or taped to them, so we’re going to try using the book cradle to photograph those in more detail.
I’ve gotten used to using the scanner itself, but setting up the computer for the camera is still something I need to practice. Matt wants me to try setting it up by myself next time we meet up so I can commit all the settings to memory. I know there will probably be a couple days over this semester that I’ll be working in CHDR alone, so I definitely need to learn as much as I can. I feel like we’re starting to get more into a routine though, so I’m really excited to keep working!
-Kelsey R.
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