Fans of local history and genealogy now have an advanced resource at their disposal at the Houston branch of the Texas County Library.
Thanks for the most part to funding provided by a federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, the library is now equipped with a new ScanPro 3000 microfilm machine. The unit allows easy access to the numerous rolls of microfilm in the library’s possession that contain images of past issues of the Houston Herald dating back to 1888, and it’s also connected to the Internet so users can do things like log onto genealogy-based websites (such as Ancestry.com) and email themselves images from the machine.
“It essentially is a computer with the microfilm attachment,” library director Molly Shelton said. “It has all kinds of great features, like you can enlarge an image, lighten or darken it, zoom in on a particular text, or even adjust focus to make a really old page clearer. On our old machine, how it showed up is how you had to see it.
“Plus it was so big and so time-consuming to use it – this is just a huge improvement for staff members and everyone else.”
Shelton said the machine cost about $13,000, with about $10,000 being covered by the LSTA grant.
“We couldn’t possibly do this kind of thing if we didn’t have access to money like this,” she said.
The ScanPro unit is available for free use by all library visitors, and copies of images on its screen can be made for 10 cents a page. It basically allows access to the Houston Herald’s extensive archives that are available to subscribers of the paper’s electronic edition.
Cabool is the only other county library branch equipped with microfilm, but Shelton said its collection is substantially smaller and is accessed by one of the older machines.
Shelton said acquiring the new machine represents another step in the county library system’s quest to attract more adult involvement.
“I know some people are scared away by new technology, but it’s very easy to use,” Shelton said. “And it’s used like a computer, and most people are becoming more comfortable with that, so hopefully they’ll want to come here and use it.”
For more information, call the Houston library at 417-967-2258.