Do you have photos of Fairview? From either yesterday or 50 years ago (or more)? Are you interested in sharing them? We’ll be at the Fairview Community Council meeting Thursday, December 14. Why? As part of our Sharing Community Images project.
What is the Sharing Community Images Project?
As part of our ongoing effort to document the diverse perspectives and places represented in our community and to make sure those photographs are available for research, we invite community members to contribute their own photographs to the Archives. We will have some scanning stations set up at the Fairview Community Council meeting (at the Fairview Community Center, 1121 East 10th Avenue). We will also be accepting photographs created digitally. The digitized photographs will be made available to the public for research and use through Alaska’s Digital Archives. The Archives will also keep high-resolution master copies of the images. Participants in the project will receive high-resolution digital copies of their photographs.
What should you bring?
We encourage participants to bring photographs from any time period, including the present. We also hope to get photographs that portray a wide variety of subjects, including events, scenery, wildlife, buildings, and people. Because our goal is to provide access and allow the copying and use of the digital images, we ask that you bring photographs that are in the public domain or to which you own copyright (i.e. you or one of your parents were the photographer).
Depending on how many people want scans and how much time we have, we may have to limit the high resolution scanning to scan five photographs per person. (You can bring as many digital photos as you’re willing to describe!) We have the equipment to scan photographic prints, slides, and negatives, and we are happy to scan any of those formats. Please be sure to bring the original photographs, rather than photocopies. We will also be accepting photographs taken digitally with a digital camera or cell phone. If you would like to submit digital photographs, please bring them to us on a USB drive, SD card, or CD.
How to participate:
Come to the Fairview Community Council meeting at the Fairview Community Center, 1121 East 10th Avenue on Thursday, December 14th. We’ll be there from 6:30-8:30.
In addition to bringing your photographs to scan, we have a couple of forms for you to fill out. In order to make the photographs available for use on Alaska’s Digital Archives, we need permission to authorize use of the photographs. Our image use form (pdf) allows you to retain copyright while providing us with permission to provide access and allow use of the photographs. You can either fill it out in advance and bring it with you, or we’ll have copies for you to sign.
When we add images to Alaska’s Digital Archives, we also include descriptive information about the photographs, such as the creator, location, dates, and subjects of the photographs. This is the information we typically put on images when we place them in the Alaska’s Digital Archives. When you bring in your photographs, one of our archivists will work with you to gather the information.
We look forward to working on this project! Thank you so much for being willing to share your memories with the many people who are interested in Alaska photographs worldwide. If you’d like to have us do this with your community organization, please contact us: we’ll see what we can arrange.