One of my goals when originally creating this site, was to provide free access to non-copyrighted material from MC and Eastern Montana historical books like Fanning the Embers, Echoing Footsteps, Faded Hoofprints, and other important ones in digital format - so they could be preserved, searched, indexed and cross-referenced online.

A little bit was done way back when, but not enough in the entire scheme of things.

The photo above is from "Fanning the Embers". I just took it with my cell phone, and as you can see it has 580 pages alone. And lots of stuff on each page. And that is only 1 book.

I would like to finish that project and others up. I'm not exactly sure how to proceed at the moment, but if enough people are interested I'm sure we can figure something out. Please let me know if you think this is an effort worth pursuing by responding here. Thanks!

Regards, Larry
MilesCity.com Webmaster

Larry, I'm in. Let me know what you need and if I can do it, I will.

There are a few items in the public domain that are already in electronic formats. I could likely help scanning things to pdf, if that would help.

I'd be good for a monetary donation, if that would be useful.

But as I said, let me know what you need.

I wonder if these options should be considered:

1) Contact Google Books. They might in some way cooperate, allowing scanning speed and OCR accuracy beyond the reach of most mortals.
2) Seek a grant. There are people in Miles City with experience writing grants.

The library I use in California, even with inter-library loan services, often cannot provide the Montana history volumes I want. Moreover, the purchase price of a desired book is often high enough to stop me from proceeding.

I always prefer to see books in searchable PDF format, which preserves the original appearance, including photographs. I love the "reality" of photographic documentation.

Please also note that the two Brown and Felton books on L.A. Huffman have wonderful and detailed area history. Both books have extensive footnotes and are well indexed.

Best wishes from San Jose.

[Edited by Gary Coffrin (2/21/2017 11:50:21 AM)]

Something like this looks like it would useful for scanning books:


https://www.amazon.com/CZ...ref=sr_1_2

I don't know if that is actually a good product or not, but that direction would probably be the way to go. ???

"Echoing Footsteps" is digitized at the MT Memory Project if you can deal with excruciatingly slow downloads.

http://www.mtmemory.org/c...0265/rec/6

"Custer County Area History: As We Recall", essentially an updated/ expanded version of "Fanning the Embers" is also there.

http://www.mtmemory.org/c...3/id/20874

Is "Custer County Area History: As We Recall" actually an updated version of "Fanning the Embers"? I have a copy of it in a box somewhere, but it seemed like it had somewhat different/newer biographies and info - not the same older ones that FTE had. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that was just my impression after glancing through it a long time ago.

Thanks for the links. Their site seems almost impossible to search though. Or at least it is not behaving well at the moment. : (

They aren't identical by any means. Most biographies look to be updated or additional info along with the newer entries


My FtE is an eBay find. If anyone recognizes who Tommy & Edith might be, it has a photo of what looks like a Little League baseball team as a bookmark

Re: "Custer County Area History: As We Recall" (CCAH)

On the Montana Memory Project website the book is presented as jpg images. There are 608 pages. It’s possible to download the jpegs and then bundle and save them as a pdf document.

It’s well worth noting that CCAH is copyrighted, 1990, by the Curtis Media Corporation. Montana Memory Project states:
Rights Management: Digitized with the permission of Henington Industries, Wolf City, Texas

"Echoing Footsteps" is likewise copyrighted, 1967.

Larry, assuming there were no copyright issues, would a pdf doc work for you? Could you offer the book on mc.com in that format?

Hal Neumann wrote:

Re: "Custer County Area History: As We Recall" (CCAH)

On the Montana Memory Project website the book is presented as jpg images. There are 608 pages. It’s possible to download the jpegs and then bundle and save them as a pdf document.

It’s well worth noting that CCAH is copyrighted, 1990, by the Curtis Media Corporation. Montana Memory Project states:
Rights Management: Digitized with the permission of Henington Industries, Wolf City, Texas

"Echoing Footsteps" is likewise copyrighted, 1967.

Larry, assuming there were no copyright issues, would a pdf doc work for you? Could you offer the book on mc.com in that format?

Yes, I could host the PDF online. If for some reason there was an issue, the appropriate person could contact me and ask it be taken down.

The stories, accounts and facts in the older books, the ones I've looked into anyway, are either public domain or are not covered by a valid copyright.

In many cases, it's kind of like a business directory. Someone can copyright a business directory, but they don't actually own the public domain information contained in it. They might own the compilation of information, but not the information itself.

That said, I don't know what motivation remains of the CCAH publishers, or even if they still exist, but considering it is out of print and has already been made widely available for free, and we are talking about a non-profit endeavor for educational, research and preservation purposes only, I don't see how anything horrible could come out of making the information more accessible.

Yes, I could host the PDF online. If for some reason there was an issue, the appropriate person could contact me and ask it be taken down.

Okay. I'll tackle CCAH - it'll likely take a while to download 600 + images, I'll let you know if I bump up against a roadblock.