We have been greatly blessed through our first full month here. We have been given a suggested quota for our work (3,000 images per week) and we are happy to report that we met that quota. We were expected to spend the first 2 or 3 months getting set up, working on a system and getting into a routine and we are doing pretty well already. It has been a challenge and we have worked on varying systems. Elder Syme has developed a pretty efficient way to find the books we need to scan. It can get rather painstaking to go through them all at the shelves, so he has found a way to do most of it online and put it all on a spreadsheet.
He is pretty awesome!
So - for our totals for the month of September:
Total number of books: 111
The total number of pages: 15,019
The books vary in size, length and quality. A couple of books were printed on stiff, almost cardstock type paper, some have pages that are fragile and falling apart. One book was hand written on lined paper in a binder. Some books have such tight binding, it is hard to get them to open so you can see the inside margins. We did one that was typed on what we used to call 'tracing paper' that was so see-through we had to put a piece of paper under each page we scanned. Thankfully it was only about 30 pages. We have to keep track of the page numbers so we don't leave any pages out. That gets to be a challenge when there are inconsistent numbering, or pages with pictures and blanks with no numbers and you have to count to make sure the pages come out even. But that's okay, it keeps us awake.
The oldest book we did was printed in 1825.
This is the largest book we have scanned so far. It is The Baldwin Genealogy From 1500 to 1881. It was printed in 1881. It has 989 pages. It was rather fragile as you can see.
Some of the pages were loose.
Some parts of the book had broken apart from the binding part of the way making it tricky to turn the pages and keep them straight. It took us 2 1/2 hours to scan this book.
There is some wonderful information in it. Elder Syme found some of his family names: Henry Baldwin, his 12th great grandfather, Sylvester Baldwin, his 11th great grandfather, and William Baldwin, his 10th great grandfather. His daughter, Grace is his 9th great grandmother.
By the way it's already on line!
This is our smallest book. Number of pages: 1.
Not all books are 'books'. Some of the ones we scan are in envelopes and consist of pedigree charts, booklets, or something like this. It is still cataloged as a book. Quite a few books we have done only have a 5 to 20 pages.
This is the most unusual book.
Don't know what happened to the lower part,
but what was there appeared complete.
This book is in pretty sad condition. It is completely separated. The edges crumble when you touch them so I had to turn them very carefully when we scanned it. We won't reshelve this one. There are people here who will either rebind it or put it in a protective covering.
Over 60 of the books we have scanned are already on familysearch.org.
It can get a little tedious sometimes, but for the most part it is very fascinating to work here. We have scanned some books that are real gold mines of information. One thing that is frustrating is finding a wonderful book but we can't scan it because it's copyrighted just a year or so after the deadline of 1923. (We can scan books from 1923 to 1978 if there is no copyright.) One in particular had wonderful information that was printed in 1927 with a copyright. I wonder if the person who wrote it would have wanted it shared.
We'll never know.
Up on the 4th floor we have a map scanner for scanning large pedigree charts and other things that relate to family history. We are just getting started with this. We did a demonstration last week to show that we can scan without damaging the documents. There are wonderful people here that are excited about what we are doing. They just need a little reassurance.
Over 60 of the books we have scanned are already on familysearch.org.
It can get a little tedious sometimes, but for the most part it is very fascinating to work here. We have scanned some books that are real gold mines of information. One thing that is frustrating is finding a wonderful book but we can't scan it because it's copyrighted just a year or so after the deadline of 1923. (We can scan books from 1923 to 1978 if there is no copyright.) One in particular had wonderful information that was printed in 1927 with a copyright. I wonder if the person who wrote it would have wanted it shared.
We'll never know.
Up on the 4th floor we have a map scanner for scanning large pedigree charts and other things that relate to family history. We are just getting started with this. We did a demonstration last week to show that we can scan without damaging the documents. There are wonderful people here that are excited about what we are doing. They just need a little reassurance.
Sometimes, when we are scanning a book, I get a strong feeling that there is someone very excited about this being put on line. It is such a humbling feeling to be part of this important work.
The Lord is hastening His work and we are blessed to be a small part of it.
During the first couple of weeks we were here, we were interviewed for an article and had our picture taken. That article is now online:
The director of the society is Paige Talbot. She is absolutely wonderful! She is the kind of person that you feel like you have always known her the minute you meet. She is so excited and supportive of our work. She held a 'President's Reception' at her home for the board members and society members and invited us to attend so we could meet them and let them know of our work.
I was a little intimidated by the idea at first, but it turned out to be a great experience. They were friendly and fun to talk to.
How about a little library trivia:
When we first got to the library, I was fascinated with the elevator. As you can see, there are some pretty fancy walls in there:
I found out why. When they were doing some renovation of the building a couple of years ago, they covered the elevator walls with boards to protect them from the equipment that was being hauled. Someone thought they should dress up the boring brown with a picture. So they blew up a picture and pasted it up 'temporarily.' Everyone liked it, so they kept it.
I found this copy of the picture on the wall on the 4th floor where our map scanner is.
The Sister Missionaries invited us to join them to meet an investigator at the visitor center at the temple site. Unfortunately he didn't show up. But it is always great to be with the missionaries.
Sister Foote (on the left) is from California. She's going home in November. Sister Bennett is from Woodland Hills, Utah. She has 4 more months before going home. We took them to dinner on Friday and had a great time. They live a few blocks from here.
They are like a shining light and breath of fresh air!
Before we came home I took a walk around the temple to see how it's coming along. They have that fence with the green on it making it hard to squeeze the camera between the openings to get pictures, but here you can see they have started putting up the granite.
It doesn't really show in the picture, but the granite sparkles in the sun. It's going to be beautiful!
The members here are so excited about the temple. It's a 2 hour drive to the Washington DC Temple. It's also a little over 2 hours to the Manhattan Temple. I am amazed at the dedication of the members to sacrifice so much time to attend. I think we may take our temples in Utah for granted. It's amazing to think that when I get home to Mapleton, I will be less than 30 minutes from 4 temples, 1 hour from 9 temples, 2 hours from 12 temples and 3+ hours from 15 temples.
We are so blessed!
Aww, I loved the article and the comments. You are answering prayers.
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