The North Lake Tahoe Digitization Day will take place June 26th, and you're invited to take part in the festivities! Stop by the Gatekeeper's Museum (130 West Lake Boulevard) in Tahoe City to have your historical Tahoe visual materials digitized, and to learn more about the preservation and use of historical resources.
Original visual materials documenting Tahoe’s history—preferably materials created prior to 1970.
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Some examples include:
·     Photographs (prints or negatives)
·     Posters
·     Brochures
·     Postcards
·     Stationery with logos of local businesses
·     Scrapbooks
·     Sketches
·     Paintings
·     Maps
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Because carefully handling and scanning your materials takes time, we may not be able to digitize all the resources you may have during this event. We suggest that each participant select five high-priority items (or pages, if bringing in scrapbooks or other multi-page items) for scanning; if there are no other participants waiting for scanning, we’ll be happy to scan additional materials beyond that amount. All staff and volunteers will be trained in proper handling procedures, but our scanning set-up won’t allow us to digitize extremely fragile materials, and we won’t be equipped to perform conservation on materials, so please take this into consideration when selecting materials to bring.
All participants will be invited to sign a form donating a digital copy of their materials to the NLTHS, for potential inclusion in the NLTHS’s database and use in future exhibits and research. For participants who select this option for their materials, UNR photography students trained in metadata creation and standards will do further research on these materials and create captions and subject headings to make these images more easily accessible by researchers.
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If you have physical materials that you’d be interested in donating to the NLTHS, staff and board members will be on-hand to talk with you at the event, or can be contacted at info@northtahoemuseums.org.
If you've pre-registered for an appointment, all you need to do is head straight to the scanning station with a sign announcing "Pre-registration" at your appointment time, give the volunteer your name, and you're good to go!
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If you're a drop-in appointment, you'll find a sign-in area at the entrance to the digitization area. When you sign in, you'll get a number, and you'll be called to the next available digitization station (of four we'll have open to drop-in appointments) as soon as your number is up. Feel free to wander around the Museum and listen in on the presentations as you wait, but please don't leave the Museum building, as we'll have to move on to the next number if we can't find you when it's your turn.
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Once it's your turn for scanning, the digitization volunteer will ask if you'd like to digitize your materials yourself--in which case they'll walk you through the process, step-by-step--or if you'd just like to observe, which is fine, too. If any of the materials you've brought in are oversized, you'll stop by the overhead photography station, too, so that we can take a high-resolution image of the item.
Once your materials are scanned, the digital files will be copied to a USB drive you can take with you. The volunteer will present a form giving you the option of donating a copy of these files to the NLTHS--we hope you'll take this option, but it's not required, and we're happy to answer any questions about what donation means.
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Your next step, if you've chosen to donate a copy of your materials, will be to go to the computer stations set up beyond the digitization stations, where you can enter into a form any contextual information you have about the materials--when they were made, who made them, who's pictured in them, or any other information you know that might be helpful to future researchers. If you don't know any of this information, that's fine, too--we'll do our best to find some of it out!
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And with that, you're ready to move on--to listen to some of the speakers we have scheduled, to talk with volunteers, or to look around the Museum's collections at your leisure!
We hope you'll be able to stick around all day to enjoy the programming and learn more about the history of the North Lake Tahoe community--but if you need to be in and out, with no waiting in line, and all of your materials are 8" x 10" inches or smaller, we have a limited number of half-hour digitization appointments available.
(Photograph of skiers at Tahoe, courtesy of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society's Henry Collection)
Peter Goin is a Foundation Professor of Art in photography/videography at the University of Nevada. He is the author of four books about Lake Tahoe, starting with Stopping Time: A Rephotographic Survey of Lake Tahoe, and then within the Arcadia series, Lake Tahoe, South Lake Tahoe Then & Now, and Lake Tahoe A Maritime History.
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This event has been made possible in part by a Common Heritage grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at:Â www.neh.gov.
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Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The North Lake Tahoe Historical Society (NLTHS) was founded in 1969 by a group of concerned citizens who were passionate about preserving Tahoe’s history, and telling its stories. The NLTHS mission is to preserve, present and interpret Lake Tahoe history, and the NLTHS does this through its three museums located in Tahoe City. Additional information about the NLTHS is available at: www.northtahoemuseums.org.
In concert with the evolution of the photographic medium, the University of Nevada, Reno's photography program has pursued an evolving curriculum that embraces the digital era of photography. The Photography Department at the University of Nevada Reno emphasizes using photography as a means of creative expression. Additional information about the UNR Photography Program is available at: www.unr.edu/art/about/photography-videography.
