Our room is silent.
No Jason hitting the record cards on his desk to separate them so that
they will go through the digitizer cleanly.
That also means no dust from the records either and no broken pieces of
cards all over the floor from his efforts.
It is altogether too quiet – but we get more done this way.
I am pleased with the progress I have been able to make in
preparing the records for York county. I
am also feeling more comfortable in working with this higgeldypiggeldy
hodgepodge of record keeping that they used in York County – the trick is to
beat them at their own game and I think I have done it.
I am now working with the April Term records for 1806 and
have separated out the continued actions portion of the records and divided
them into 3 piles – 1-100, 101-200, 201-300 and I have completely put the 1-100
in its folder and into the storage box.
How cool is that?
The Carmack’s who are working in Ohio doing digitizing are
having troubles with it and so they wrote to the Duncan’s who used to be in Vermont
till about a month ago. Duncan’s
forwarded their query to us and said they were now home…………….so ask the Markham’s
in Maine to help you. Passing the Buck I
suppose – but I wrote the following to the Carmack’s:-
Hello to fellow workers and retired workers in this
missionary effort,
first, Elder and Sr. Carmack, are you working with a cradle?
We had a cradle to work with but it was not in good shape and SLC continually told us that they would fail all our work if we did not get the glass changed due to it having a scratch in it, but the state was strapped for funds and would/did not change the glass until I found someone on the staff who just took care of it and let the state whine over the cost.
that was problem no. 1.
Problem No. 2 was a bigger headache than anything else.
It consisted of a camera that was not working properly and SLC said it was the operators (meaning us) but then it finally died and then they sent us a replacement that was also not working and they had to send us a third item so that it now works.
I am not shouting at you in the next sentence.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE YOUR CAMERA BENCH TESTED TO SEE IF IT IS WORKING PROPERLY. ask if the array is doing its thing in the corners of the pages.
It is probably something they are not willing to do for you because they expect that the camera is in good working order. However, after the comedy of errors that were committed they did send us a camera that was appropriate for the work.
I am not a camera buff, but I suspect that this digitizing thingy that the church has embarked upon is the best they can come up with but does not seem to be fully appropriate for the work that they are asking us to do. that is my opinion and I know that they violently disagree with me, but they are not the ones on this end struggling with the problem of cameras.
Problem no. 3. also a big headache
Movement. we got ding'd more times than enough for blurring - and try as we might we struggled with this problem for the entire time. It was not until Bro. Sanhueza came (last month - just 2 months before we leave for home) that we discovered that the camera setup - primitive though it is compared to what is available in this day and age - was not properly bolted together and therefore it wiggled and gave us blurred images. He also got after us for this problem and scolded us for not checking the set up before this, but what did we know? We have not been schooled in the finer points of camera work or set up. when we came we assumed that this was the way things should be and that they would work perfectly - after all are we not on the Lord's errand? shouldn't we expect it all to work perfectly? turn out a perfect product every time?
Problem no. 4.
Blurring or imperfect capture in the corners of the pages. this is a difficult one to overcome. The first thing to check is the camera and its ability to do what is asked of it. (bench test)
Second thing is to have the camera high enough up so that the array is complete as possible. (eternal arguments erupt among the computer guru's in SLC over that problem)
If you have a cradle and I am assuming that you do, having the camera high enough might do the trick so that the camera can capture all four corners of the open book. If not, then you may have to do what we did - do it one page at a time.(with right / left capture, which is a pain to do and takes a long time) SLC is not happy about that because they said that the camera is not being used efficiently if we do one page at a time, but they have no help to offer about non-capture of top left and right corners or non-capture of bottom left and right corners of an open book.
Another problem is the books that we were asked to capture. they were tightly bound and the image 'fell off' and was unreadable close to the center in the gutter.
To conquer the most stubborn of problems that faced us, we did right/left capture of two really oversized books and we did not use the cradle but used clamps to hold the pages down, and we used spirit levels to make sure that the pages were level as possible - horizontally as well as vertically and then pressed capture. We also used foam wedges and anything we could get our hands on to help make the pages level and flat. We did this for every page just about and we re-focused every 10 pages. We did it this regularly because no one in SLC or even Bro. Sanhueza could tell us what the depth of field was for this camera. If we knew the depth of field (i.e. how many pages could we do safely without having to worry about whether the corners, center or whatever part of the page would be having problems, and then have to re-focus.), things would have worked a lot smoother for us.
If none of this works for you and has been of little or no help to you, then keep in mind a quote from a couple who are now in Ireland doing record capture , "there is little you can do that will please Salt Lake completely. They are hard to please"
when it is the end of the day, I know that there is nothing sweeter than experiencing the Spirit of Elijah as we work with these records. these are records of real people and they have descendants who want to know about them and we get to make that possible. the problems melt away when this happens.
If you need more input - please write.
thanks and God Bless
The Markhams.
first, Elder and Sr. Carmack, are you working with a cradle?
We had a cradle to work with but it was not in good shape and SLC continually told us that they would fail all our work if we did not get the glass changed due to it having a scratch in it, but the state was strapped for funds and would/did not change the glass until I found someone on the staff who just took care of it and let the state whine over the cost.
that was problem no. 1.
Problem No. 2 was a bigger headache than anything else.
It consisted of a camera that was not working properly and SLC said it was the operators (meaning us) but then it finally died and then they sent us a replacement that was also not working and they had to send us a third item so that it now works.
I am not shouting at you in the next sentence.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE YOUR CAMERA BENCH TESTED TO SEE IF IT IS WORKING PROPERLY. ask if the array is doing its thing in the corners of the pages.
It is probably something they are not willing to do for you because they expect that the camera is in good working order. However, after the comedy of errors that were committed they did send us a camera that was appropriate for the work.
I am not a camera buff, but I suspect that this digitizing thingy that the church has embarked upon is the best they can come up with but does not seem to be fully appropriate for the work that they are asking us to do. that is my opinion and I know that they violently disagree with me, but they are not the ones on this end struggling with the problem of cameras.
Problem no. 3. also a big headache
Movement. we got ding'd more times than enough for blurring - and try as we might we struggled with this problem for the entire time. It was not until Bro. Sanhueza came (last month - just 2 months before we leave for home) that we discovered that the camera setup - primitive though it is compared to what is available in this day and age - was not properly bolted together and therefore it wiggled and gave us blurred images. He also got after us for this problem and scolded us for not checking the set up before this, but what did we know? We have not been schooled in the finer points of camera work or set up. when we came we assumed that this was the way things should be and that they would work perfectly - after all are we not on the Lord's errand? shouldn't we expect it all to work perfectly? turn out a perfect product every time?
Problem no. 4.
Blurring or imperfect capture in the corners of the pages. this is a difficult one to overcome. The first thing to check is the camera and its ability to do what is asked of it. (bench test)
Second thing is to have the camera high enough up so that the array is complete as possible. (eternal arguments erupt among the computer guru's in SLC over that problem)
If you have a cradle and I am assuming that you do, having the camera high enough might do the trick so that the camera can capture all four corners of the open book. If not, then you may have to do what we did - do it one page at a time.(with right / left capture, which is a pain to do and takes a long time) SLC is not happy about that because they said that the camera is not being used efficiently if we do one page at a time, but they have no help to offer about non-capture of top left and right corners or non-capture of bottom left and right corners of an open book.
Another problem is the books that we were asked to capture. they were tightly bound and the image 'fell off' and was unreadable close to the center in the gutter.
To conquer the most stubborn of problems that faced us, we did right/left capture of two really oversized books and we did not use the cradle but used clamps to hold the pages down, and we used spirit levels to make sure that the pages were level as possible - horizontally as well as vertically and then pressed capture. We also used foam wedges and anything we could get our hands on to help make the pages level and flat. We did this for every page just about and we re-focused every 10 pages. We did it this regularly because no one in SLC or even Bro. Sanhueza could tell us what the depth of field was for this camera. If we knew the depth of field (i.e. how many pages could we do safely without having to worry about whether the corners, center or whatever part of the page would be having problems, and then have to re-focus.), things would have worked a lot smoother for us.
If none of this works for you and has been of little or no help to you, then keep in mind a quote from a couple who are now in Ireland doing record capture , "there is little you can do that will please Salt Lake completely. They are hard to please"
when it is the end of the day, I know that there is nothing sweeter than experiencing the Spirit of Elijah as we work with these records. these are records of real people and they have descendants who want to know about them and we get to make that possible. the problems melt away when this happens.
If you need more input - please write.
thanks and God Bless
The Markhams.
They wrote back that we had made their Day…………..well at least
we have accomplished something by making someone’s day…………..wooohooo. the Markham’s ride again!
We only have 22 days left here and we went to Wal Mart today
to pick up Bill’s prescription and get a little bit of food – it seems strange
to only get a few things – usually we spend at least $100 but we do not want to
have lots of food left over before we leave.
We had been contacted by a new couple who thought they may
be coming to Augusta to take over where we left off, but Manny says that they
are going to be sent to the Vermont records office instead. I had sent 30 pictures of Maine and etc. to them
and they loved what they saw but it will not be their lot to be here. I am so sad.
Today Jacob had his first day at Mayo Clinic. I talked to Sara, amid some screaming and
crying children (they are all stressed out because Daddy is at the Doctor’s ,
as Lyla put it). She said that the
doctor talked to Jacob and they did an MRI of him and took Blood tests. Tomorrow he has a rather risky procedure to
be done, but we are all hoping and praying for his success and for the skills
of the doctors at Mayo clinic. We have
his name in as many temples as we can.
The joyful thing for today was when Lyla answered the phone
and said , “Hello! This is me, Lyla”,
what a sweetie – it was enough to fill this grandmothers heart to overflowing
for the rest of the day.
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