 Hello everyone, I'm James Milan and welcome to this inaugural episode of check it out. What's up at the library? This is a new series that we are kind of Re-inaugurating in a sense because we've we've done series with the library before But there's always stuff going on as we all know lots of stuff going on at our libraries And so we want to have a chance to check in regularly with library staff And in this case, we are starting right at the top with the director of our libraries Andrea Nicolai who is joining me and Arlington's pre eminent historian Richard Duffy is also here. And why are we here? Well? Richard deserves to be here as as our as our expert historian not only because this is a historic occasion right here with the inauguration of this series, but also and especially because Of the rollout of a brand new resource at the library as of April 4th You will be able to check out the historical Arlington newspapers all the newspapers in Arlington or local newspapers going back to the 1870s have been digitized right through 2005. That's what we're here to talk about today Thanks for joining me. Thank you both. I really appreciate it. You know, we met briefly yesterday to kind of Discuss what we're going to talk about today and the excitement that you both have about this new This new resource was very palpable. So let's start there. Tell us what what it is that has you so Excited about this. Yeah, sure. Yeah So we are excited about this resource because it really creates much better access to the history of Arlington Before this resource people would have to make time to go to the microfilm in the library and it was a very painstaking process and With this resource people will be able anywhere in the world Log on and check out the advocate going back as you say all the way back to 1871. So it's just a phenomenal New access to a collection that I think people will be really interested in in searching and discovering And how about for you? Well, speaking of discovery one of the things that's difficult with local history in general and local newspapers In particular is sometimes unless you know exactly where you're going unless you have the exact date in mind it's difficult to discover information because it's either thinly indexed or not indexed at all and having the opportunity to perform a search just as you would with with any search engine and To have specific pages many of them in many cases of the historical newspapers come up is Incredibly powerful. It gives people The information they're looking for and very very quickly So we are going to show people a little bit later in the segment Well, we'll kind of you know do a little demo and give some provide some tips and tricks, etc But to begin with I would just like to to get a better sense Of how did this all come about? How long has it been in gestation? And you know and how long did it take to create what was involved? So if we if I can start by asking you just to kind of give us the the overall picture here Sure, sure. So this is something that a lot of libraries have done recently We have been wanting to do this project for a while now years But it really took permission from the publisher for one thing Gannett aka formerly gatehouse media Granted us permission to not only digitize up through 2005, but make it available Remotely so that people wouldn't have to be in the library to access the resource and that was really important to us So gaining that permission in addition to through the generosity of the of Richard through the Arlington libraries foundation we were grant it granted Funds to do the project so very grateful to Richard for that because without that grant it It would have probably taken a little time to come up with the funding to do this project. So really wonderful set of coincidences and Generosity and that's how it got off the ground Mm-hmm and Richard obviously you you know, Andrea has already mentioned that you are do our Gratitude for your generosity, but I as I understand it you also were Intrinsically involved in the actual process. It was bald self-interest. What can I say this? I'd like to say I know a lot about Arlington, but not enough So this certainly for me gives me some some new opportunities to learn Some new things, but what I'm really excited about I work with a lot of people in the course of People attending lectures or programs or down at the Arlington Historical Society Who have a tremendous amount of interest in in what went on during during their own lifetimes? You hear about people through Facebook groups who want to know something and now we're able to Turn over to them The newspapers just as in the past the library has digitized Arlington High School yearbooks and town annual reports So this continues that trend of accessibility to Arlington's past by the library You know, I'm gonna just introduce in a side here and I beg your indulgence Because as you said you know a lot about Arlington's history even if you don't yet know as much as you want to You had mentioned to me again as part of our earlier conversations that you are from Winchester Yes, so all the way from Winchester. Yes, all the way from Winchester I'm just curious what what made you turn to the town next to the town that you grew up in to Devote so much of your time and energy to you know, really plumbing the depths of our history I have loved local history since the the first elementary school third grade unit on local history that you get Maybe they do it in fourth grade now, but but since very young childhood I've been interested in the subject matter and actually no matter where I travel in the world It is the local that draws my attention is something very special about learning about the the everyday and how special it is so when I bought my first home in Arlington and and settled here that was a logical next step for me got it So your adopted community right next to your net need native community Yeah, I decided to go all in on and doctor now perhaps the most renowned pediatrician of Arlington He was my pediatrician, so I have I have those kind of Arlington roots to spare Good enough. All right back on to on to the topic. Excuse the digression. So what do you guys think are? You know to start talking about The it's not a website. It's again. It's a resource To start talking about this though What do you think are just a couple of the coolest things as far as you are concerned about you know beyond what you've already mentioned Well for one thing kids will be able to use this resource a lot more easily than they are able to use the microfilm in the library As I mentioned earlier the microfilm has been you know We it's not a user-friendly way to look at media You have to get the real you have to get a librarian's help to To spool it through the machine and it's it's a process and so it's a barrier and It presents a barrier especially for young people because young people let's face it. I mean, you know, it's a it's a very digital world Feel yeah, so anyway So it's it's just gonna be so much more simple for a student at Arlington High or at any of any school or home school to access Arlington's history for any number of projects and in particular with You know the range of focus the range of subjects that have to do with Arlington's history the history of Race in Arlington. I mean these are subjects that Arlingtonians are deeply interested in and that young people are especially interested in And I think that uncovering that history through this resource will be really exciting for a lot of a lot of students in particular You know, I'm really glad that you cited That it's the removal of a barrier That is, you know part of what you think is really cool here because Again, even in coming up with the name of this series check it out I thought wow that represents the essential process of the library And also a process that we have all seen all of us here in Arlington over the last number of years and especially post you know the post the incursion of the pandemic How our libraries are devoted to removing barriers around checking books out for instance There are or books and other materials There are so many ways in which you can do that now and it's become so much more convenient Yeah, and ironically it was kind of the pandemic the Closure that kind of allowed us to focus on a project like this Which required, you know removing the microphone from the collection for a while and anyway, so it's yeah well said Access is is key and you know, there are there were there have been enough barriers In the last couple of years. We are not interested in barriers. We want to remove them. So yes, absolutely This is and you don't even need a library card You don't even need to be a member of the of the Minuteman library network in order to access this resource It's just a URL through our website and that's it and it's just such a beautiful simple process Yes, you know And you may expand upon this if you if you wish Richard But you had referred to it as giving people keys to the car, right? Just just make it as easy as possible right in the comfort of your living room wherever you are You can access and anybody can start driving right away. There. There are not too many Driver problem although I know that Andrea and her team have prepared some great tools that she'll mention to help acquaint people with With the capabilities because just a moment ago I was I was doing a search and Andrea was sitting next to me She goes well, you know, you can search this way more efficiently. So we're not we're not we can't let our librarians go Just because we have this tool in order to make the most of it. There are some things to to know about it All right. Well actually talking about the librarians that that's a good segue to the next thing I wanted to ask you about which is focusing really on who it is that you see getting Particular benefit or making particularly great use of this new resource And I let's just start with the librarians. How is this going to change? The research librarians job, etc. Thank you for asking that so librarians care about the patron experience And so just for the simple reason that it'll be easier to show people how to access History You know without the steps involved with microfilm It frees up the time of the user and that's a really critical core Value of librarianship. So we always want to be saving people time and energy if we can so the librarians are thrilled In particular the local history librarian is thrilled our local history librarian Stephen crochet. He's rather new He's been instrumental in learning this resource preparing some support materials to help people learn how to use it and all of that will be on our website, but I mean he in particular will be getting a lot of requests for for example obituaries or Town records or you know just things things that people request that have to do with local history And his job is just going to be so much. He's going to be able to deliver so much more quickly and and Richly I guess As a result of this this being available And yeah, who did who did you have in mind? Well, you know, there's a there's the information piece That's that's so critical for the learning of history But I don't want to neglect the entertainment piece just as we have nonfiction and fiction in the library There's a lot of enjoyment to be had in these newspapers someone could enter the date parameters of the month they were born and they can actually Read the newspaper page by page. They don't need any search terms besides the date To to go in and see what was going on whether it was their own birth announcement whether it might be What was on sale that week what people were eating what cars they were driving on a very local level? So if you were born in Sims Hospital in 1945 you have a real treat waiting for you because your parents may not have saved that newspaper Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know on that topic you guys gave me the opportunity to play around a little bit with this With this resource over the last 24 hours and I was happily did so and among other things What I did was put in some very prominent dates And you know like December 8th of 1941 for instance And just kind of looking at what the local coverage was And reaction was to dates that we're all familiar with because they're of global significance again just a really interesting way to for me to spend a little bit of time and Again as much entertainment as it was in from you know informative and it's it was it was quite lovely So recommendation from from me people are gonna love it So speaking of which let's let's let's kind of Play with this a little bit sure now. Let's show people what it is that they can do because Just a reminder what we're talking about is Basically everything that you could access on microfilm and still can we'll talk about that in a little bit, too Everything you can access on microfilm in terms of all of the images the actual images of the pages of the papers Are now available just at the touch of a button on your on your computer. So show us what that looks like Sure. Okay. Well, I'm gonna be the patron because I am the patron and you can see the Landing page right here nice nice and clean What's nice about the landing page is you can glance down people there's not really a need for people generally To search by title, but this shows you the many different newspapers and how long they published and and that's some good information to keep in mind but I'm gonna perform a quick search here and It it defaults to all of the words that can give you far too many hits so as Andrea just showed me click exact phrase and you don't need to use quotation marks. So I'm going to pick a A Neighborhood in Arlington, which is just on the south side of route 2 and it's called Arlmont Be good if I spelled that right Arlmont village and I happen to know when it went up. So I'm gonna Put some parameters, but let's say I know it was built in the 1930s a good thing to do is to put 1929 to 1941 Because that gives you some margin for error there Mm-hmm, and then I just click discover Let's see what comes up and I'm just gonna pick the very first hit and it doesn't come from the Arlington advocate It comes from the Arlington news Which some people may have said I didn't even know we had that's right Just even looking at the list of papers that we've had is interesting So I glance down I see Arlmont Village So I see that this is an advertisement and advertisements tend to be very entertaining because of the language they use And so they're talking about Arlmont Village and the line that really jumps out at me is Have the houses you have been looking at been approved by good housekeeping with its well-known rigid requirements So they're beautifully furnished and decorated by good housekeeping. So the information that's what they mean by good housekeeping Approval a bit. It's not only for products. It was also for houses in Arlington But what this does is I said, okay This has given me an advertisement and if I look in the upper right corner There seems to be a news article which is going to have more information of interest to me And I'm going to jump over to here using this arrow and it's going to take a second to load and we're going to get the front page of the Arlington news and Just as if you're reading the newspaper there And I'm on a mission to look for Arlmont, so there's the main article right there, but over here just by glancing a little bit to the left or the right I see construction of Street started I can see Dine at Coffords. What's coffords? Well, gosh It's it's a restaurant right here in Arlington and I can see what the the roast stuff chicken dinner was 75 cents and And things such as that you can You can get down into everybody's favorite Stores that they remember or stores their parents spoke about the new 1938 radios that were on display So there's lots of fun and informative stuff and this is just based off of that Simple search our more village and I and I got all of this bonus material just just Wonderful stuff there and yeah, so I mean you you were mentioning that Andrea had steered you towards the exact phrase option Let's you know because people who are tuned in are actually looking at what they're going to see What are a couple of other tips or tricks that you'd like to share with folks to make their experience even better? well There are filters available So if you only want to search the Arlington advocate and you perform your search Let's say you were to do that Arlmont Village search Once you get your list of results on the left-hand side, you'll you'll see the filtering area where you can filter by I believe it's year It's newspaper. Let's go ahead and look at that To reset my oh, no, not the year 1291 we didn't we didn't get the rights to go back that that was my next digitization request actually whether whether we might be digitizing some yeah the Magna Carta, etc Okay, so I'll do this and I'm going to again do that exact phrase And I'm going to discover Okay, so there's the Arlington news now one of two things is you could just keep scrolling down the Arlington news obviously gave this big coverage, but I could just click Arlington advocate over here and Do I have is that what I'm doing am I doing that right good Okay, so and this is coming up here This is what the advocate had to say about it and the Arlington advocate just happened to be in today a more subdued publication the Arlington news was more of a popular press But here we see something that's interesting in 1936 debaters wax hot over Arlmont Village project Indulgent personalities in bitter language before the new Arlington Heights development gets sewer and water So you can you can get the turmoil not only the good housekeeping seal of approval but you can get the agony on the way of earning that seal and and so easily and And you just you can look at other stuff while you're here People are invariably going to do that unless someone is in a real hurry They need they need to know they need grandpa and grandma's wedding picture and they need to get out of there But otherwise they're going to linger and they're going to be tremendously Rewarded and I'm noting that the that the format there of the front page You know, it's just the format alone Kind of tells you that you're in a different era not just the the nature of the content in the language, but just So many little articles right there on the front page. Yeah again just Learning stuff as we go here. Yeah, and for additional tips and tricks Of course, you'll be able to go to the library website and our local history librarian Stephen has put together a youtube video It's about eight minutes long and it shows you everything you need to know about how to do a search He's also going to be conducting an in-person training. So I think that's April 12th. I'm not mistaken. It's in the library events calendar There's also a meet the local history librarian event happening later in April. So lots of ways to learn this new collection and I'm just looking forward to supporting it. Mm-hmm. Yeah Yeah, let with the with the few minutes that we have left I'd like to ask just a couple of more questions one is we've mentioned various times that this is Basically, it's not replacing but it is an an an alternative Way to access what is available on microfilm So a couple of things about that one is This database right now only goes through Or this resource only goes through 2005 and But I understand that people can access material in the advocate in other places Since 2005 they just have to do it in a different way. Is that right? Yeah, there's a link actually on the homepage of the new resource. Um, there's a link to the Place where people can find full text from 2005 through the present And that's an database called news bank. Mm-hmm And of course we still digitize. Sorry. We still microfilm the editions of the Arlington advocate up through the present so, um, I mean, obviously this year is still ongoing, but we have microfilm reels for the advocate from 2000 from 1871 all the way up to 2021 and you know, we'll continue to collect microfilm and have it as a a way of having some redundancy And and options for digitizing in the future. So Right. So for those purists or technophobes out there Just it's nice to know that microfilm microfilm continues to exist and will and be used and be available in the library Um, that leads me to my second question and this is more directed to you Richard I understand that, um, again as I alluded to earlier, um There is your personal generosity in terms of helping to make the funding available to do this But there's also your the the labor intensity of what it is that you did as part of this project So my understanding is you went through every reel of microfilm. I did I did indeed. I I guess if you want to be, uh, uh, a hands-on Donor I was literally a hands-on donor, uh during the pandemic before the library was Was properly open. Everything had been moved into all I would have to call the library safe room Uh designated space up in the up in the attic of the library So all the filing cabinets were moved in there and it was a one-person operation and I went through each and every reel because there were some reels that had missing issues Or cuts that were in really poor condition. So a dimension of this project was to make sure We had the very cleanest And complete copies of the microfilms in order to produce the best results Because there are going to be artifacts and lines and that can inhibit people sometimes discovering a word So the cleaner content you have that's scanned the more likely you are to find what you're looking for So it was very important from that, uh perspective because it's an investment and you want to get it right The first time it's it's not it's not going to be redone in a couple more years. This is this is an enduring project Yeah, and you know, I I'm just going to make a guess here, but thinking back to the uh, the home page For uh, the uh, the historical Arlington newspapers Um, I believe that in that listing right there there it is. So we've got looks like Uh, approximately a hundred and forty thousand pages Uh, there, uh, as I just kind of do a quick calculation So that's what you went through. It was a well more or less I mean what I really wasn't reading although it was very tempting to not stop and read every word But then the project would be done some year in the 2030s. Um, but what I would end up doing was going through and paying attention to um, uh Just the general condition and sometimes you knew uh within the first, uh I might get as far as march of the given year and I might be able to say Okay, all I'm going to check for now is issue completeness because the condition is generally good Sometimes you could you'd stop it would be july. I'd say oh, we're missing the july something issue So we actually had some old physical newspapers Uh, that were bound And we took those physical newspapers and those were microfilmed and then scanned in order to be included here So we actually added missing issues of the advocate to the uh database that would have been been lost forever So that was a great discovery. Yeah, and I I really want to thank you Richard for doing all of that leg work on this collection Um, yeah, it was a tremendous effort not something that we that we could have supported just we were actually between Local history librarians when this was happening. Yeah, and uh for that reason and I mean just the yeah the volunteer effort Was tremendous. So thank you Richard and I've been involved with the library's foundation for for since its inception So I've now been kicked upstairs for the board of advisors. So so this has a very personal, um, uh satisfaction for me Having served for many years as a member of the foundation I've got to assume so because you know, I understand you didn't read everything But nonetheless eyes on that many pages just to be able again to confirm that that that the state of them was Satisfactory many artificial tears were shed I'll leave it at that Yeah, I mean at some point I'd love to know just how many you know person hours duffy hours That added up to but uh, you know, let's say it was significant sweat equity. That's all right It was great and it actually wasn't a since since I love the material, you know, it was uh, it was a pain pleasure kind of dynamic Certainly a passion project. No doubt about no doubt about it and um You know speaking of which, uh We're we're drawing to a close for this uh, this this first episode of check it out and um Let me just ask you, you know, what do you? I don't know. What what what are what are your hopes as as as this begins to To roll out and people become aware of it, etc. Do you do you have any, you know specific, uh I do like there. Good. Definitely. I mean, I I want people who've never used a library resource online to use this resource like I want somebody who's preparing a speech for a retirement at you know, the I don't know at an organization in town to look at this collection as a way to help them do What they need to do to honor their coworker their colleague to honor their parent or grandparent in a In a meaningful way for a ceremony. I mean there are so many ways that someone could really use this resource to To create a meaningful life experience in some realm that I can't even think about I can't even think of you know So I I hope that every early tony and find something to discover and Be surprised and delighted or just learn from this. Um in some way Yeah, and I would add to that. Um, I'll just pick a topic that continues to be discussed and debated with a lot of misinformation Um being generated uh almost 50 years later and that's the extension of the red light That was planned to uh terminate at one point in Arlington center than Arlington heights and go out to bedford and There was a lot of ink spilled in the 1970s during uh that time And this will uh allow me if people are are insisting on a certain point to point them to a resource and say Well, read it for yourself or or or look at it for yourself Rather than why be based on and as told to well, I heard this from my neighbor who lived here then No, acquaint yourself with what the what was being said, uh and done and along that same lines, you know Along that same line the idea of how journalism was done at that era and the words that were used the The way that things were framed and who was framing them I mean, those are all important details to look at when it comes to history Yeah, and it does seem like you know, it goes without saying that we we are in an era of massive and uh And and incredibly concerning misinformation and disinformation Uh all around us So the idea that you could again in both both of the things you cited whether somebody's preparing a speech to honor somebody else Or uh, you know in the way that you talked about at Richard It's going to be accurate Right, you're going to be able to go right to the source and find out what somebody what was said about that thing at that time And it's right there in front of you. So, uh, again, that's the work of libraries and librarians In many ways the work of historians as well So, um, so glad that both of you could join me for this first, uh, episode in this new series And that we talked about something such so exciting. Thank you So thank you for the work that you've done on it already and let's all enjoy The rollout so just to remind you we're talking about april 4th and uh as the the debut of uh Historical arlington newspapers this uh new resource that again puts All local history going back 150 years right at your fingertips. So take advantage I've been speaking with richard duffy and with andrea nicolai Thanks again to both of you for being here. Thank you for being here as well. I'm james melanne. This is check it out We'll see you next time