Hold Onto Your Hat-we're going digital

Preserving history is often an arduous task. It requires not just a love for the subject, but a knowledge of advancing technology. Video Home System (VHS) and cassette tapes have often been used to record the images and audio of everyday life and the invention of the camera allowed people to document their lives in ways that had never been thought of before. Each of these inventions, however, still find themselves victims to the march of time. Tapes will degrade, photos will age and equipment will become obsolete.

Currently, Saratoga resident John Perue is volunteering his time to digitize tapes, photographs and other documents as part of a project called "Hold Onto Your Hat."

A large part of the history of the Upper North Platte Valley is in photos and articles that are in the hands of Richard "Dick" Perue. D. Perue, who is a previous owner of the Saratoga Sun and brother of J. Perue, worked under the previous owners: R.I. "Dad" Martin and R.D. "Bob" Martin before purchasing the newspaper from the Martin family.

Not only did the Sun go from the Martin family to D. Perue, but so to did the extensive collection of photos and papers that had been a part of the Martin family since 1917, when the elder Martin first purchased the Sun.

"Dick had made this promise to Bob Martin to preserve this, to preserve it for historical purposes. That was his goal, and promise, that he'd made to Bob Martin," said J. Perue.

D. Perue has often stated that the Martin Perue collection has over 10,000 photographs and documents.

"There have been a number of people ... that have donated pictures to him also with the intent of being preserved as part of the history of the Valley. So, this is not just his collection," said J. Perue.

With a collection that size, it was proving difficult for there to be a physical space to house the collection.

"Dick wanted to donate this to either one of the museums ... or the State Archives. Saratoga Museum did not have enough room to really store this," said J. Perue.

The conversation evolved, especially within the last year, to digitizing the collection. Upon retiring from the Old Baldy Club, J. Perue had the time to commit to helping his brother preserve the collection. What started out with saving the photos in the collection led to preserving VHS tapes that D. Perue had from when Saratoga had a television station. Digitizing the VHS tapes, then, led into doing the same for the collection of cassette tapes housed at the Saratoga Museum of oral history that dates back to the 1970s.

"This thing keeps growing every time I turn around," J. Perue said.

There's more to the process than just scanning photos, video, audio and documents to preserve them in a digital format. Photos, especially, need to be identified.

"It's not just scanning them in ... then you need to go back and get them identified. We'll need some help when we get to this part of it. Dick's going to be the one that has to identify a lot of it, but then we have to get that, a lot of data entry, data in and associated with each picture," said J. Perue.

In addition to the collection that D. Perue currently has, the project has expanded to include that of other longtime Valley local: Elva Evans. Evans and Judy Hodges wrote the "Reflections from Our Files" column for the Sun for nearly 30 years and has an extensive collection of articles organized by subject in her home.

Hodges has compiled a considerable collection of obituaries of past Valley residents which will be integrated into the research computer.

"If we don't digitize it and if we don't save it, then nobody will know how Saratoga got here, is part of the North Platte Valley. Why did they choose this Valley? Why did they stop here? Our older generation, they don't want to see their lives erased. They see what's happening in the future, but they don't see a way to preserve the past until what John has done. I can't tell you how many people are excited about the effort and the time that he has done it. They never thought that it would happen, so I'm very excited to be able to get this out there and to let them know," said Kimberly Givens, current director of the Saratoga Museum.

While J. Perue has been donating his time to ensure the digital preservation of these collections, the process of preparing them for public consumption is a financial undertaking.

"Not only do we have want to have it on a computer there (Saratoga Museum) that is usable, but we're going to have to store it on a cloud somewhere which means that this is going to have to have long term sustainability for financing and the same with being available online," said J. Perue.

To help with that financial sustainability, both J. Perue and Givens are hoping to increase the membership of the Saratoga Museum.

"The memberships will help us to get computers, to help us pay for the cloud. They also have a choice to donate to the Hold Onto Your Hat project," Givens said.

During the upcoming "A Toast to History" wine tasting event, a display will be set up that will show the work that J. Perue has completed so far-which he currently estimates at over 200 hours and over 1,200 photo negatives.

Those wishing to help with the project itself are encouraged to contact Givens by email at [email protected] or by phone at 307-326-5511 or 307-710-3226. People can also contact J. Perue by email at [email protected] or by phone at 307-326-5850 or 307-329-8596.