Culver Library - Digital Microfilm Reader

A 2006 grant from the Marshall County Community Foundation will open up a host of new possibilities for local history and genealogy researchers at the Culver-Union Twp. Public Library.

The Foundation awarded over $6,000 to the library towards the purchase of a digital microfilm reader and scanner for the library’s developing local history and genealogy room, located in the basement of the original 1915 Carnegie library portion of the library building at 107 N. Main Street in downtown Culver .

According to Jeff Kenney, who works with the local history and genealogy materials and their archiving on the library’s website, the library owns most of the past editions of the Culver Citizen newspaper, going back to 1903, in microfilm format.

In recent years, patrons of the library could browse back issues of the paper using the library’s existing reader, but Kenney says the printing quality and ease of use of the machine was spotty at best.

But what really revolutionizes patrons’ possibilities with the new machine is its digital capacity. “The new microfilm reader is a Konica Minolta and it’s digital,” says Kenney. “That means that it will almost instantly transform the image on the screen (of an old newspaper article or photo) into a digital format so that patrons can email the images to themselves or others, save them on cd, share them almost instantly with others in digital format, and of course print them…but with far better printing quality than we had before.”

This is good news not only to researchers digging for local history or family information, but also to Kenney and the library as well.

“In the past, we had to pull out one of the huge, fragile hard-bound books that hold our old newspapers and place a computer scanner over them or use a digital camera. That was not only cumbersome, but pretty hard on the books themselves. Some of them are crumbling and falling apart from their age already.”

The information stored in the Citizens of the past, notes Kenney, contains the community’s shared history.

He and other staff have been adding articles and images from the newspapers to the library’s online collection to share with users of the website, some from states all over the U.S.

The new digital microfilm reader will make this effort as simple as a few clicks of a computer mouse.



In the photo above, Kenney demonstrates the new reader to (from left) Rosalie Bonine, Susan Flora, and Helen Osborn


Kenney expressed his and the library’s appreciation of the Community Foundation’s assistance in purchasing the machine.

“These machines are fairly expensive, and the grant we received from the MCCF was invaluable for us in being able to purchase it. This is something I’ve been hoping to add to the library’s services for a few years now, and the MCCF grant made it possible, so we are very grateful.”

The public is invited to stop in at the library and use the new microfilm reader any time during the library’s normal open hours. Questions should be directed to...

27 Dec. 2006 Culver Citizen