On my last visit, I had looked at some records from the Abington Monthly Meeting where Sarah's ancestors were members. I had found lots of helpful information and had made many paper copies of pertinent records.
This time I decided to be "daring" and try something new. One of the microfilm readers at the library is set up so that you can made "digital surrogates" of the microfilm images. For a fee of $5.00 you can bring your own thumb drive and save as many images on it as you like. I tend to be "technically challenged," so the idea of this made me a little nervous. I decided to give it a try, though, and was very glad that I did.
Once I got used to the method of saving files, it was pretty easy to do. I found some new information and was able to make digital copies of the records. I also went back and made digital copies of some of the records I had copied last time. The advantage of having a digital copy is that you can zoom in on the image and can also enhance the image by adjusting the contrast, etc.
I went back to the library today to look at a book about the Livezey family. (Sarah's mother was Mary Livezey Fox.) The book was very helpful and had a lot of information that I wanted to copy. I started out carefully transcribing the information by hand.
Then I remembered seeing something on the library's website about using a digital camera. For $5.00 you could take as many photographs as you liked. I realized it was going to take me all day to transcribe the information by hand, so I decided to try using my digital camera (which I had brought in with me) to make copies of the pages of interest.
In less than an hour I had photographed all the pages I needed. Even copying them on a copying machine would have probably taken twice that long, and the copies would not have been nearly as good. In almost no time at all, I had about 30 crystal clear copies which I can now look over at my leisure.
So I have finally "gone digital," and I'm glad I did. I could really get used to this.
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