Digitization preserves Sayville history

Members of the board of the Sayville Historical Society, Roy Fedelem, Peg Piffard and Elaine Whitehouse, recently traveled to the Palmer School of Long Island University to collect items that had been digitized there in 2022.  The digitization is a project funded by a generous five-year grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, with an emphasis on collections within Suffolk County.

The $1.5 million grant provides fellowships for master’s and doctoral students to assist with the project. Another grant of $1 million, to be used in $40,000 yearly segments, will be made available to continue the project. The Sayville Historical Society is one of 46 historical societies that have taken advantage of the opportunity to digitize their collections, with a goal of 80 historical societies participating by the end of the project. Director Dr. Gregory Hunter spearheads the program.

At the start of the project, the Palmer School established an on-campus Digitization Laboratory featuring two scanners: a DT Atom Digitization System manufactured by Digital Transitions to scan very large items, and an Epson Expression 12000XL for smaller ones. The resolution of the scans is remarkably clear, even when the images are enlarged. The scans are uploaded to the leading cloud-based system “preservica,” where images are available to the general public. 

Dr. Hunter explained the digitization process as he led the board members on a tour of the labs, where three graduate students worked diligently. Here is where they scanned and uploaded three large books of maps and two binders of vintage postcards from the Sayville Historical Society. The process took about a year, longer than anticipated due to delays caused by COVID-19 and other setbacks.

The Sayville Historical Society applied to be part of the project in an effort to preserve, list, track and organize records of what it has and to make the collection more accessible. Historical Society president Roy Fedelem noted that it is important to preserve the society’s collection because all ephemera is fragile and will deteriorate over time. Digitization is a way to not only preserve the items, but also make them available to anyone who wants to see them.

The Sayville Historical Society boasts a large collection of artifacts donated by members of the community, as well as original items from the Edwards Homestead. The society board members discussed which items might be included in a second round of digitization. The diaries of Mary Erhard, superintendent of the Cottages for orphaned children in Sayville; the minutes of meetings dating back to 1940; and the extensive collection of memorabilia of Father Divine were suggested, as well as the photos from the popular Sayville History book published by the society.

Public access to the digitized materials is available at liu.access.preservica.com.