Saturday, September 13, 2008

New Equipment in the Genealogy Department

You may have noticed a new piece of equipment in the genealogy department if you have been there recently. It is a digital microform reader (it will read microfilm and microfiche). It is attached to one of the PC's. That PC can still be used to access Ancestry.com and other databases, but it also now has this added capability.
Rather than making you read a projected (and unclear) image of the microfilm, this device converts it to a digital image and shows it to you on the computer screen. You can do all sorts of improvements to it (change the brightness of the image, increase its sharpness, etc), and then chose to print it or save it to a flash drive.
New instructions are being made up now and are projected to be placed next to the reader by Tuesday, 16 Sep. We will also be giving orientation sessions periodically to demonstrate its use. It will take some time before all the consultants at the library are up to speed on the reader, but we hope the instructions (which contain lots of pictures) will be all that you need to get up and running.
This reader will breathe new life into our microfilm and microfiche collection. Check it out.

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