So obviously Dave Shirk doesn't read my stuff
This morning, it was warm enough for the sheets of ice on Lake Estes to begin spontaneously cracking, unexpected, unprovoked rifle shots that serve as the harbinger of spring. What a wonderful, jolting sound, another sign of renewal and change - so welcome compared to the sickening cracks of comminuted femoral neck fractures echoing across the lake, as yet another hepped-up AARP Sunday walk warrior hits uneven pavement, collapsing in agony to the ground.
Similarly, I like Dave Shirk. I think he is a "good guy". As a former taxpayer-supported town staff member, naturally he is going to have an affinity for his compatriots. But his recent response in the Charley Dickey monster template, where he actually did some research at the museum rather than just jot down a boilerplate response about how wonderful an necessary the preservation of heritage is during times of advanced global thermonuclear war, demonstrated how a little knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing. If you are going to base your entire belief system on speaking with one individual, rather than 20 different individuals on all sides of a topic, you run the risk of exposing yourself as a bit naive.
My e-mail to him follows. I have no doubt he will respond, because, well, what else is on his schedule prior to the meet and greet at the Rock Cut Brewery public house (anyone ever think of holding these events where children and teetotalers feel equally comfortable)? And I will have no problem posting his response in its entirely, regardless of whether he supports, attacks, or evades the premise.
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Dave - From the answers you provided to Charley Dickey (or at least Charley Dickey made it available in an email that appeared on the Estes.org website), you spoke with museum director Derek Fortini about the digitization of newspapers, and apparently came away thinking the museum needed a financial boost to accomplish this.
The digitization of the Estes Park Trails from 1921 through 1950 inclusive has already been completed by the Estes Park Archives. If you have trouble believing this, just send a letter to publisher Mike Romero, and he will confirm that, for example, he let us use the Estes Park Trail-Gazette bound volumes in their collection from 1940-1945, "unbind" them, and lay each page flat on an oversized flatbed scanner, for optimal results.
The Trail-Gazette was unwilling to pay a hosting service (not us, we did it all free of charge, and didn't expect payment) to make this information available on their website, either as a free service or a "pay by the article" service. We are currently unwilling, giving copyright restiction laws, to make it available on our website without the Trail's parent company signing off saying we won't be sued, since the Trail-Gazette is still a living entity, and their parent company is in the business of generating profits, not newspaper archiving.
So the Museum, in my opinion, can raise whatever private funds they want, and approach whatever private donors they want, to essentially duplicate our efforts. The library's previous attempt to digitize up through what is not copyright restricted (and thus available wihtout having to enter the courts to argue about public doman) through the State Department of Education, available at http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org was less than optimal, in my opinion, but I will leave it up to the experts to compare percent "extractable" information (compared to the originals) from their webite and from ours. One simple test would be to pick up any issue of the 1921 Estes Park Trail and select any article at random, and type in either a phrase or a proper noun (someone's name, for example) from that article, and then compare recovery from their digitization process and from ours. Do that experiment ten different times with ten different articles or ten different issues, and you will pretty quickly have your answer.
But at the point that the town and taxpayers are approached to fund a duplication of efforts, I will point out (as I'm doing now) that this, at least up to 1950, would be a complete waste of taxpayer money. Taxpayer money has been wasted in the past, but for something like this, where there would be few users of the resulting infomation in town (I could see it benefiting researchers living out of town, but again it would be difficult to monitize it, or measure how many people out of town were coming to Estes Park for follow-up specifically because our early newspapers had been digitized), I think "pet projects" like this, especially when they have already been done at no charge by a private entity, are probably best funded by other means, for example, grants or private donation.
As another example of the problem I have with the museum (for some strange reason) attempting to duplicate Estes Park Archives efforts, we recently spent about 6 months down in Commerce City (not on consecutive days, and not on weekends, but essentially over 500 man hours) organizing a large collection of negatives and postcards produced by the Sanborn Souvenir Company. When I was kind enough to provide the company owner with contact information for a museum board member to extend an invitation to visit, since an organized collection would be of great benefit both to her collecting interests and, longer term, to a museum which claims it is striving to be the best small town museum in Colorado. She graciously and wisely invited along the museum director to assess the collection (although the museum apparently doesn't have the funds or interest currently to acquire the complete collection, and that is the only way it will be sold, to a major institution and at or near the company's asking price, and not as a tax write-off), they (or she, I'm not privy to the conversation) left expressing a wish to return and begin a project of assembling the same information, as far as recording titles and code numbers for over 11,000 postcards, I had already just completed.
So it's clear there is a bit of a disconnect between the museum and those entities in town who are also interested in saving local history. (In the case of re-doing our work at the Sanborn company, in order to accurately determine the information they are interested in replicating, delicate negatives will have to be manipulated inside and outside of the sleeves housing them, and I see little reason to subject them to this same exercise twice, unless for some reason I am an apparition, or they believe they are seeing ghosts.)
Thanks and look forward to your response.
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| I wish Lake Estes had a lighthouse. Especially one that shimmered and made flower garlands grow on deer antlers |
My e-mail to him follows. I have no doubt he will respond, because, well, what else is on his schedule prior to the meet and greet at the Rock Cut Brewery public house (anyone ever think of holding these events where children and teetotalers feel equally comfortable)? And I will have no problem posting his response in its entirely, regardless of whether he supports, attacks, or evades the premise.
////////////////
Dave - From the answers you provided to Charley Dickey (or at least Charley Dickey made it available in an email that appeared on the Estes.org website), you spoke with museum director Derek Fortini about the digitization of newspapers, and apparently came away thinking the museum needed a financial boost to accomplish this.
The digitization of the Estes Park Trails from 1921 through 1950 inclusive has already been completed by the Estes Park Archives. If you have trouble believing this, just send a letter to publisher Mike Romero, and he will confirm that, for example, he let us use the Estes Park Trail-Gazette bound volumes in their collection from 1940-1945, "unbind" them, and lay each page flat on an oversized flatbed scanner, for optimal results.
The Trail-Gazette was unwilling to pay a hosting service (not us, we did it all free of charge, and didn't expect payment) to make this information available on their website, either as a free service or a "pay by the article" service. We are currently unwilling, giving copyright restiction laws, to make it available on our website without the Trail's parent company signing off saying we won't be sued, since the Trail-Gazette is still a living entity, and their parent company is in the business of generating profits, not newspaper archiving.
So the Museum, in my opinion, can raise whatever private funds they want, and approach whatever private donors they want, to essentially duplicate our efforts. The library's previous attempt to digitize up through what is not copyright restricted (and thus available wihtout having to enter the courts to argue about public doman) through the State Department of Education, available at http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org was less than optimal, in my opinion, but I will leave it up to the experts to compare percent "extractable" information (compared to the originals) from their webite and from ours. One simple test would be to pick up any issue of the 1921 Estes Park Trail and select any article at random, and type in either a phrase or a proper noun (someone's name, for example) from that article, and then compare recovery from their digitization process and from ours. Do that experiment ten different times with ten different articles or ten different issues, and you will pretty quickly have your answer.
But at the point that the town and taxpayers are approached to fund a duplication of efforts, I will point out (as I'm doing now) that this, at least up to 1950, would be a complete waste of taxpayer money. Taxpayer money has been wasted in the past, but for something like this, where there would be few users of the resulting infomation in town (I could see it benefiting researchers living out of town, but again it would be difficult to monitize it, or measure how many people out of town were coming to Estes Park for follow-up specifically because our early newspapers had been digitized), I think "pet projects" like this, especially when they have already been done at no charge by a private entity, are probably best funded by other means, for example, grants or private donation.
As another example of the problem I have with the museum (for some strange reason) attempting to duplicate Estes Park Archives efforts, we recently spent about 6 months down in Commerce City (not on consecutive days, and not on weekends, but essentially over 500 man hours) organizing a large collection of negatives and postcards produced by the Sanborn Souvenir Company. When I was kind enough to provide the company owner with contact information for a museum board member to extend an invitation to visit, since an organized collection would be of great benefit both to her collecting interests and, longer term, to a museum which claims it is striving to be the best small town museum in Colorado. She graciously and wisely invited along the museum director to assess the collection (although the museum apparently doesn't have the funds or interest currently to acquire the complete collection, and that is the only way it will be sold, to a major institution and at or near the company's asking price, and not as a tax write-off), they (or she, I'm not privy to the conversation) left expressing a wish to return and begin a project of assembling the same information, as far as recording titles and code numbers for over 11,000 postcards, I had already just completed.
So it's clear there is a bit of a disconnect between the museum and those entities in town who are also interested in saving local history. (In the case of re-doing our work at the Sanborn company, in order to accurately determine the information they are interested in replicating, delicate negatives will have to be manipulated inside and outside of the sleeves housing them, and I see little reason to subject them to this same exercise twice, unless for some reason I am an apparition, or they believe they are seeing ghosts.)
Thanks and look forward to your response.
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