Thursday, March 11, 2010

Time machine at the Library

Yes that's right folks. Step right up to the time machine, also known as ... the MS6000 microfilm machine! It's the interface between old and new. We have a microfilm collection here at the Beaverton library that you can peruse, just like how the people on History Detective do. It's housed in steel drawers which are shiny and new. Spinning a reel of microfilm is like zooming into the past. If you scan the microfilm image on the MS6000, it provides you with a perfect computer file of the image.

You can take it with you-- yes that's right--a digital copy of an archive-- past meets present. Microfilm is the exact same copy of the newspaper as it appeared--no digital changes --no hacker alterations. Safe and sound in it's hermetic microformat! You can pull up that image of the time that the Knicks beat the Lakers, or the Moon Landing, or the front page of the paper on the day you were born...

Then save the image to your device and poof! You can post it to your facebook -- a picture tells a thousand words. You could paintshop your own face onto the image and pretend you were there, ok, maybe not.. just ways to have fun for free at the library...

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