The Odessa Public Library and the Odessa Historisches Museum have continued their partnership this year with a Washington Rural Heritage sub-grant to digitize a wealth of cultural heritage materials, including some cool multimedia. This slideshow interprets the story of the settling of the Odessa area by Germans from Russia, who came to eastern Washington starting in the late 19th century, as well as the difficult yet tenacious history of the Odessa Historical Society and Historisches Museum.

 

With an interest in photography, film and audio recording, the Historisches Museum’s founder, John E. Gahringer, MD, produced the slideshow in the 1980s from 272 images made on Kodachrome and Ektachrome 35mm slide film, and created an accompanying narrative on audio cassette with a synchronized cue track. The cue track allowed certain slide projectors, like the Telex Caramate 4000 shown in the short video below, to advance through slides automatically.

After a failed attempt to capture the essence of the (malfunctioning) Caramate projector for posterity, Washington State Library staff digitized the slideshow’s components and have reconstructed the presentation in video form. Watch the trailer above for a quick introduction, or see the full length presentation here.

Tags: digitization, Washington Rural Heritage

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