SAVING the past
Photos courtesy of Carnegie Library
A collection of photos and other mementos of historical Jennings may have been lost to time if it were not for the efforts of one man who digitized them, saving them for generations to come.
The collection of photos and articles were originally compiled by Walter D. Morse and contained artifacts from Jennings’ founding in 1881, all the way up to the 1950s. Morse compiled a scrapbook in 1961, and donated it to the Jennings Carnegie Library for preservation.
Nearly 60 years later the book’s contents were in varying states of deterioration, said Hugh Guilbeau, a local technology specialist who undertook the restoration of the photos.
“These photos were beginning to deteriorate, so I decided to scan them and restore them,” Guilbeau said. “These photos and the history of Jennings are important because all history is important. In the very oftenquoted words of the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Most cities do not have such a voluminous collection of photos reflecting their history.”
Guilbeau already had some experience with the Morse collection, having culled from it to create a book entitled “Historic Jennings Photographs,” which can be purchased at the Carnegie Library, all proceeds from which benefit the library.
The photos and any accompanying text left by Morse were painstakingly restored while adhering to the original tone of the photos and text, Guilbeau said.
“The text in the scrapbook was typewritten on paper that was often stained and faded, so the optical character recognition software I used had a difficult time recognizing some words and characters, but I corrected the text for grammatical and punctuation errors but did not alter the narrative and intent except where it was necessary for clarification,” he said. “As for the photos, I made exposure and other minor corrections, and when there was damage I tried to repair it in Photoshop.”
The collection of photos, which number in the hundreds, was reprinted into three separate volumes and as of this week can be viewed at the Jennings Carnegie Library. Some of the photos can be viewed online at www.jenningscarnegielibrary.com.