Celebrate! Celebrate! I have some wonderful news to share! As you recall, the Historical Society had 30 years of copies of the Ronkonkoma Review on hand and they had been organized years ago in order to be bound. They were placed in boxes and kept in the Museum’s attic. Binding the papers never happened but it was obvious that preserving the newspapers was one of the “dreams” of the founding members. It became one of our dreams too. After much hard work reorganizing them, removing double copies, choosing the best preserved copies and counting the number of pages that needed to be digitized, the fund raisers started. From May, 2022, when the fundraisers started, throughout last year as funding was obtained, batches of the Newspapers were packed and sent off to be digitized. One box was left awaiting the necessary funding. The Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society is very proud to announce that, February 20, 2024 the following issues are a part of the New York State Historic Newspapers Database: 31 October 1959 – 31 October 1985 (1483 issues). The quality of the print is beautiful and they are fully searchable. BUT, THERE’S MORE! We are “over the moon” because the funding for that last box of newspapers containing issues from November 1985 – October 1989 was received thanks to a grant from Long Island Library Resource Council. That grant was obtained by our Volunteer Extraordinaire Lesia Macko! The last box of Newspapers will be sent off to be digitized in the next week or so. It should be up in the New York State Historic Newspapers Database within the next 3-4 months. That will complete this very ambitious project. Although the project was very much a collaborative effort with fundraisers starting in May, 2022, special heartfelt thanks and kudos need to go to our volunteer Lesia Macko for taking on the whole of the project, including organizing everything, finding the best price for quality image digitization with accurate OCR and collaborating with various government entities. She also researched and obtained grants for the project from The Library Council and the Pomeroy Foundation. She took on a lot of work and we all benefit from it.

 

Happy reading and researching! 

 

Joyce D. Sorrese

Curator

Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society Museum