by Thomas S. VanOsten, Boy Scout Troop 42
I have been a member of Boy Scout Troop 42 for several years and have done many community service projects like food drives and church clean ups at St. Matthew Lutheran Church. My Eagle scout Project focuses on starting a preservation program here and it starts with preserving the old church register.
Currently, there are two church register books. The original dates from 1949 to 1999. The second one dates from 2000 to the present day. My project is solely focused on the original register for several reasons.
The register is one of the most important documents in this congregation which officially documents church members, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, funerals, pastors, historic events, child members, and council. These documents are something that needs to be protected and preserved at all times. This project is aimed at digitally preserving the old register because there are no copies of the information within the old register.
My project to digitally preserve the old register has many different reasons for its creation.
First is that there is no one to one copy of the information which is stored within the old register. There are only bits and pieces of that information stored like old library cards or registration cards.
Second is from an emergency management viewpoint there are many different man-made or natural disasters, such as fire, broken pipes, theft, pests, mismanagement and handling, ect. These are the kind of disasters which can impact the old register’s survival and longevity.
The decision to scan and digitize the old register to the cloud has two purposes. The first being that it’s a safer way to store information on the cloud/computer, which the church council can control. Using the cloud is like long-term storage that can be updated as technology improves. Using the cloud for storage also makes the information extremely difficult to lose.
My second purpose is that I want to make the information within the old register (which is all public knowledge) more accessible for people who might need to access the information. The information compiled would be searchable.
Currently, if someone calls for a copy of a church record, office staff or Pastor would have to guess when the record was active and search through hundreds of fragile pages. By digitizing the records and creating an index, the church has a means to research records sooner.
My proposal is in line with a collaborative effort between the national Lutheran Archives in Philadelphia and Ancestry.com to digitize church records nationally.
The old church register has some problems. The paper is aging and becoming very fragile. The glue used on some pages is affecting the paper’s longevity negatively. The lock that holds the register together broke some years ago, so we can’t easily take the pages out to scan them and then put it into a sleeve. In addition to the broken lock there are two sections of the register that aren’t in the binder, and could be prone to becoming lost if it’s moved around a lot.
What makes this project so special is that there is lots of history within it. There’s the history of the church and events that have happened, which are documented, but there are little notes about members of the church like if they moved or what their contribution was to the church. Margin notes remind us of people who served in World War II, or the relationship between families. This local history is tied to our American history and it’s important to preserve. This project has a wider benefit to local historians and genealogists who want to research local history through the records in church registers.
As of right now my project has reached the point where the whole register is scanned so, if something happens to the physical copy then there is a backup of the information. Currently in the project the files are starting to be labeled and indexed. My project is only half way finished and we still need to index the information into spreadsheets. I am looking for volunteers who can work on a computer, and can read cursive handwriting.
The church has set up a Historic Preservation fundraiser within its regular Vanco credit card giving program to assist me. The reason I’m fundraising is that we can have more ways to save that information in case the worst happens. The finished product should be protected in the 3-2-1 method of archival preservation: that’s three copies on two different types of media and one held off site. With fundraising, I’d like to provide the church with two external hard drives. Any additional funds would help get supplies for anyone else who in the future has an interest in preserving other church records. An archival kit wish list includes archival gloves, graphite pencils, photo sleeves, and other items.
If you have any questions regarding the project, contact me at tvotheperson@gmail.com. For more information on the fundraiser, visit our Historic Preservation website.