Club Historians

[Rick Shefchik]

Understood. It is labor intensive, and I did by far the majority of my newspaper research online. As there are still a number of papers that haven't put their back content online, it's hard to do a thoroughly comprehensive search.

Of course, if some club wants to pay me £2,000-£3,000 to give it the old college try, I'm game.

[Ed Homsey]

As I was browsing through this interesting thread, a few things caught my eye:

Historic Aerial photos are available at:  http://historicaerials.com/

I'm sure there are other sources.

Among the things I have learned since becoming Historian at my club is the need to develop a systematic way of organizing memorabilia, records, photos, etc.  For example, I have binders dedicated to newspaper articles going back to 1920.  At this point, I have three large binders covering:  1920-1930; 1931-1949; 1950 to present.  All entries are in chronological order.  I have detailed inventories of each binder.  Same applies to club newsletters (regretfully, the collection goes back to just the early-'80s, with a couple of 1960s issues tossed in.  Board of Governors minutes are crucial to an club's archives.  Again, our club had no system for saving and preserving minutes, so our current collection begins in the early 1980's.  We have established a system where the Board Secretary sends a copy of the minutes to the Historian; the policy was changed this Fall to having the Secretary wait until the end of a season before sending the minutes.  I await the results of that new policy.  The minutes are saved in hard copy and digital form.

Someone mentioned finding old records that were faded.  That is an important area to be addressed by every Historian.  Placing paper records, such as minutes, in archival sheet protectors is a start.  A major challenge for me was to find an archival storage area that met at least minimal requirements for such a place, e.g. temperature and humidity within a certain range, free of dust, and secure.  For an area that is short of ideal, it is important to have archivally correct containers for paper products and photos.

Our club is fortunate to have many wonderful old photos of the course and clubhouse.  These have been carefully handled, copied, and preserved on disc and external hard drive.  The photos are indexed and inventoried.  

I have had many photos donated to us from members.  One of the first things I do with such photos is to meet with the person and record the identity of each person in each photo.  I admit to having some photos from the '60s with no identity of the individuals in the pictures.  Unless there is background images that are of interest, these photos begin to lose their value.

Speaking of preservation digitally.  There is a relatively short useful life for the standard CD or DVD.  Some archivists recommending burning a new CD/DVD after 5 years.  There are preservation CD/DVD's available.  It is claimed that these are good for 300 years.  Certainly long enough for most of us!  It's a little more expensive, but worth it.

My committee has worked hard on collecting current newspaper accounts, club announcements, and other club records each years.  I just realized a couple of weeks ago that I had missed the big day of our club's championship finals, and thus did not get pictures during the competition or at the awards ceremony that followed.  I've had an email blast sent out to the membership to see if we can get some pictures for our collection.

Just noticed the last post about newspaper research.  For New York State, the FultonHistory site is a godsend.  There are other online newspaper sites in the U.S., such as NewspaperArchive.com, the Brooklyn Eagle.

Some random thoughts.

Ed Homsey

[Rick Shefchik]

Speaking of preservation, Ed, your preceding post should be preserved for anyone who might be looking for advice on how to correctly run a Historical Committee. So many good ideas here.

Sure wish you were cloned and served at several clubs in Minnesota.

[Dale Jackson]

The comments made about online resources are so true.  The histories that I and others are preparing now will inevitably be so much richer and complete because of the resources available today as opposed to even 5 or 10 years ago.

One small example.  It has always been known that Royal Colwood was AV Macan's first design.  But just last month while searching online at the Seattle Times I came across an article written in 1913 by Macan himself revealing that a Captain Chambers was also enlisted to design the course.  As it turns out Chambers left the area before the construction on Colwood was complete and Macan should properly remain as the designer but this long lost part of the Club's history would never have been discovered without online versions of newspapers being available.

[Ed Homsey]

Thanks, Rick, for those kind comments.  It has to be a labor of love because the greatest percentage of the membership in any given club is not going to be very interested.  I write a column for our newsletter, called "History Matters", that I do as much for my own enjoyment, and as record for the club, as for anything else.  I must admit to finding some pleasure from the 2 or 3 comments I get that let me know someone has read and enjoyed it.

Involvement of others in the process is crucial.  I've seen that reap great benefits this year with a 90th anniversary sub-committee of my History and Archives Committee that has really taken the ball and run with ways of celebrating the anniversary.  It's very nice to see some young folks become enthusiastic those aspects of our history that they are able to work into various types of events.  They'll occasionally ask the old guy if something works, or not, but basically, it's their baby.

Just saw the post by Dale.  Everything that he and others say about the contributions of online resources is true, but--often, it is time-consuming, tedious work.  For my club, on FultonHistory alone, I get over 700 hits.  I've printed out the listing of those citations so that I can go back at my leisure and check off the items that I have opened.  Started with the earliest years and am slowly making my way through to the present time.  Have found a massive amount of very interesting information which helps fill in the blanks of the years where we have no club records.  The excitement of a good find makes the hours of searching worth it.

Ed

[Dale Jackson]

Just saw the post by Dale.  Everything that he and others say about the contributions of online resources is true, but--often, it is time-consuming, tedious work.  For my club, on FultonHistory alone, I get over 700 hits.  I've printed out the listing of those citations so that I can go back at my leisure and check off the items that I have opened.  Started with the earliest years and am slowly making my way through to the present time.  Have found a massive amount of very interesting information which helps fill in the blanks of the years where we have no club records.  The excitement of a good find makes the hours of searching worth it.

Ed

Ed, I agree with you that it can be tedious, and as more resources come online it becomes more so.  But, and I am sure you know this, it pales in comparison to sitting in front of microfiche and microfilm machines for days and months.  Indeed, it was simply not practical to review all the periodicals that were available. Unless, seemingly, your name is Joe Bausch, whose eyesight must be severely compromised by now! 

And the excitement of the new discovery may not resonate with everyone but I know EXACTLY what you mean.

[Rick Shefchik]

Good point, Shivas. One of the quirks of online newspaper archives is that they are photocopies of pages, rather than data-entry. Sometimes the copy of the page has a wrinkle or a printing glitch that doesn't allow the search engine to pick up the keyword you're looking for. I found a number of stories by accident that I'd missed with initial searches. Even with online archives, there's no substitute for putting in the hours.

[Tim_Cronin]

I echo both Shivas and Rick on the usefulness of online archives, and of online indexes of archives (which really are two different things).

Online archives, for instance, may not have every issue that has been microfilmed. The Google News Archives, for instance, still exist but are no longer being added to, so if you happen to be going through the Palm Beach Post for info, as I recently have, you'll find dates missing. And key dates, as it turned out, that could only be filled in with a trip to the West Palm Beach library.

As Rick noted, the online index can be lacking, because they're usually compiled by automatic scanning rather than someone reading. Small type isn't always recognized properly by an automatic scanner. But sometimes the index for a newspaper will yield a gem that wasn't in the sports section, or a date that wasn't in the range I might have been looking for. And that can yield some gems, especially when other newspapers in a city for the same day are crosschecked. I've probably put in 1,000 hours looking at microfilm over the years (I think I can even fix a Minolta by now), but I always find something new.