Ideas to Action: The Memory Spot: Digital Conversion and Family Memory Recording Area

WiLS staff

By Kent Barnard, Director of the Patterson Memorial Library, 500 Division St. Wild Rose, WI 54984

Patterson Memorial Library - The Memory Spot

The idea for The Memory Spot came from a request 6 years ago to see if we could play 8mm tapes of old football games.  We couldn’t, but we procured a used 8mm projector from Goodwill.

This got us to thinking – why not find a way to convert those 8mm films to a digital format. e.g., DVD, so they can be enjoyed by future generations?  Library Director Kent Barnard set about researching how to go about this.  About the same time, he was approached by someone who wanted to convert cassettes to digital form., e.g., CDs, and soon after, a wedding VHS tape and a vacation VHS-C tape.

Writing an Ideas to Action Grant from the WiLS Ideas to Action Fund was remarkably easy, and we were so excited to receive the grant!

The equipment list was fairly short, as Barnard had purchased some of the equipment already but the grant has so far been used to purchase a Kodak film digitizer that will handle negatives from film cameras.  We were able to find a desk and credenza that had been in the village hall until they received a donation of furniture from a local bank.

We were on our way, to date the equipment list reads like this:

Dell Computer,  23” HP Monitor, Kodak Slide & Scan digital film scanner,  VHS-C Converter,  VidBox Video Converter,  EZ Cap cassette converter, 2 Lumen Edge Lights for video recording, 12” iPad for video recording, Zoom QN2 for audio recording, Wolverine Film to Digital movie maker, Bell and Howell 8mm projector, power outlet, wall outlet plugs, and a temporary “sound booth” sound absorption area for recording.

What we’ve learned:

  1. The Memory Spot needs twice the space we had originally planned for.  There will have to be room to spread out a little and room for families to record their histories.  Originally a corner area of about 8 X 8 Feet was decided on, but the area will need to be longer to accommodate more than one person at a time, or to accommodate multiple formats being converted.  While this isn’t a problem yet, we can see the need is there.

We are using space stolen from our reading room, as we do not have a separate room we could convert, this has caused some of our issues.  Our suggestion is that if you are considering creating this space, the best way to accomplish it is to convert a meeting room or under-used office, it will be easier.

  1. We have a lot of stuff – but only one computer and monitor and it works on the wi-fi.  We were able to secure some ARPA funds to extend our wired internet capabilities (Cat6) to add three more jacks in the original library.  We will be adding a second computer so digitization duties can be split between the two.  In addition, one of the VHS to DVD units we bought would not work, presumably because of the computer requirements, so we bought a different one.  We also need to purchase headphones, an oversight!
  2. We are going to be working with a professional recording engineer to help create a better “booth” for recording in our multi-use space.
  3. We actually expected to be done with this project by now, however, this project depended on us completing the other half of our digital memories, digitizing our ephemera.  Fortunately, Kristen at WiLS gave us a little nudge, telling us we didn’t have to try and get it done so quickly!

How has it been received?

We have quite a bit of interest, all word of mouth.  Mostly for converting/digitizing one format to another, but I think the family histories will come.  We have so far, without having it set up, digitized 2 VHS tapes, and I have excited Village Board Members wanting to digitize old football films.

If you build it, they will come!