Archiving, preserving series topic for Jefferson County OGS Chapter
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STRATTON -- The Jefferson County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society will present its last lecture series for 2021 with guest speaker Katy Zane, a librarian at West Liberty University, offering helpful tips on archiving and preserving personal history.
It will be held Sunday beginning at 1 p.m. at the Stratton Municipal Building, located at 136 Second Ave., Stratton.
"She is super qualified and will help us dig out our old magnetic photo albums and old documents to digitize, organize and preserve," noted Flora L. VerStraten-Merrin, chapter president.
"We will begin with a brief business meeting, highlighting the lecturers and topics slated for 2022," VerStraten-Merrin explained. "They will be held at the same location and scheduled each quarter."
As a librarian at WLU, Zane is the head of learning resources, collection management, acquisitions, rare book room curation, archive management and technology wrestler.
She has a master's degree in library and information science and a certificate of advance study in archives and has presented at statewide conferences about library instruction and overcoming obstacles in library management. Zane is a doctoral student who is writing her dissertation about library metrics and the ranking of importance in library directors and provosts.
In her archiving presentation, Zane will cover the three types of materials to preserve -- photos, important documents and journals, books and photo albums
Photo information will include assessing the integrity of the photos, how to handle the pictures, how to store the photos and digitizing -- an overall process that "will likely take years to complete," she noted in an outline.
Types of documents to consider fall into three categories -- identification documents, financial documents and otherwise important documents. To preserve them, they can be digitized with a scanner with the original preserved.
Topics under journals, books and photo albums will include "the myth of white gloves and books," clamshell boxes, personal journals, adhesive photo albums and books with aciditiy varying from decade to decade.
Aside from VerStraten-Merrin, other officersr for 2022 are: Rena Goss, vice president; Naomi Furbee, treasurer; and Edward "Buddy" Merrin, senior trustee. Board officers are Tammy Hosenfeld, first and pioneer chair and query researcher, and Michelle VanDine, newsletter editor
Office workers and reseachers include VerStraten-Merrin, Connie Rohall, Goss, Ed Giacchino and Cheryl Adams.
The chapter's address is 501 Fifth St., Stratton, OH 43961. Office research hours are Thursdays from noon to 4 p.m. with the hope to return Tuesday to the open scheduled in the spring. Hours were reduced due to COVID-19 pademic.