Oral History Project First I would like to thank all the great volunteers who signed up to help in this project. So far, your feedback has been really positive and shows it is a very interesting endeavor. After proofing/typing one, you feel like you know the person involved. There is always a need for more help in this project, so those of you who have not signed up, please do so after you read the instructions below. I’m a two fingered typist, so I will try to make this easy for everyone. I’d like to introduce myself; I’m Dick Chenault, who Karen has asked to coordinate this project of getting the Oral Histories online. I retired a couple of years ago and moved to Huerfano County, Colorado from Texas. I have no ties to Huerfano County other than living here and wanting to help on Genealogy, so I’m not much help on the history other than what I learn along with you. As you know, Karen has done a magnificent job on Huerfano County. In doing my own research in Texas, and the south, I wish other County Coordinators were as accomplished as her. I took this project to help her as she is always swamped with other projects. Many of you know, Karen copied all these files in the early 1980’s and they have been in her file drawers since, waiting for us to help getting them online. Project Methods I call it methods as opposed to instructions as each of you may know more about how to do this than I. We, Karen, Louise Adams, and I, just finished putting the 14,000 obituary index cards online using a similar method. If you find a way to improve on this, please share it with all of us. All of the interviews have been typed, so there is no listening to tapes involved. Unfortunately, some of the copies are light or faded, and some are very marked up with pencil corrections. These will require full retyping as I’m unable to scan them through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. If you are on dial-up and/or prefer to type from a printed copy, I’ll make copies of these and mail them to you to type. Obviously there is more cost involved in this, so we try to keep it to a minimum. The preferred method is to send everything by email to those on high speed internet. This is done with two types of files. The first is a Word document where I have run the complete interview through OCR software trying to recover as much as possible. I find that about 75% or more of the words come through on those that I try. Unfortunately some of the formatting does not. And for some reason, one or two pages may be totally out of whack and almost useless. All in all, I think it is worthwhile and is up to you to decide whether to use the OCR document to edit or just totally retype. As I mentioned, a two fingered typist wants all the help he can get. The second type of files are the images of the scanned pages. I find it is better to scan each page individually and send them separately. There will be a jpeg file for each page of the interview. Some are more than 30 pages, as such, I will send the pages in multiple emails as many servers don’t like emails with many attachments. Usually I will send about 7-10 pages per email. After I scan them, I have to rename them, so you will have pages named like Jones, Al.jpg, Jones, Al (1).jpg, Jones, Al (2).jpg etc. where actually the first page has no numerical number attached (in red) and page 2 has the (1) designator. Sorry but this is the way Windows renames files. You can then either save these files to a temporary subdirectory by right clicking them and saving, or open them from in the email. OK, now we have the two types of files I’ll be sending by email. You can either print all the images (.jpg files), or split your screen to view both. Split screen is the method we used on the Obituary Project. First, open the OCR Word document in Word and reduce your screen using the button adjacent to the red X, or close button, on the top right of your screen. This reduces Word to less than full screen and you can stretch or reduce each side to fit in the bottom half of your screen, full width. Next open the image file, page 1 and make it fit in the top part of your screen using the same method. Now you have the image on top and the document on the bottom. You can scroll through the top and edit the bottom at the same time. It takes a little getting used to, but in the end we found the best method short of printing all the documents. You can see when we did 14,000 cards we couldn’t print them all. You may find it easier to print your images, but this gives you an option. Formatting: Most interviews are between two or more people. You can lead each persons response with their initials, or their name. To save space, we do not double space all the lines, just between persons. You can go online to the Huerfano page and under Personals look at Maria Batuello’s interview, which is kind of our standard. Also in the OCR document, I have left at the top of each page, the page number in bold type; this is for your reference to link to the image pages I send also. Once the page has been proofed and/or typed, please remove the bold page number. When completed, send the typed/ proofed Word document only to both Karen and myself. Karen will review each file and upload to the internet. Email to: Karen Mitchell HYPERLINK "mailto:km1109@aculink.net"km1109@aculink.net Dick Chenault HYPERLINK "mailto:dchenault@pdq.net"dchenault@pdq.net I hope I have not confused anyone; I’m not the best online tutor for sure. I am always available to help anyone. I’ll leave all my contact information below, and feel free to call me anytime. I’m not always online; we all have other lives I hope. Finally, it is volunteers like you that make all of this possible. I’m sure you will enjoy each interview you complete, as well as those who are researching these individuals. We have about 130 of these to do, but with everyone taking a small part, it can be accomplished easily. I’ll be posting updates every few days to let you know how we are progressing. Right now, you are outrunning my ability to scan and email, so please bear with me and enjoy the break. If I become too much of a Taskmaster, let me know. I want this to be fun for all of us. Again, you are greatly appreciated, Dick Chenault Huerfano County Guy PO Box 652 Rye, CO 81069 719-252-1752 Verizon mbl 719-676-3311 res -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 11/27/2005

Thank you so very much Dick for coordinating this project. I think you're a keeper. I am really excited to finally see some progress on getting the Oral Histories online. Some of them are so very interesting, some are quite funny, and others are very sad. But all in all, it gives us a real good feel for the era that they speak of and of the History of Huerfano County. Quite entertaining reading. And I want to thank all of my wonderful volunteers that have stepped up to the plate when I called for volunteers. You people never cease to amaze me and I truly appreciate it. Actually, when I see so many people wanting to be a part of a project it just makes me want to do that much more for you in return. THANK YOU Huerfano County Volunteers! Dick you are a jewel! Big hugs for every one of you! Karen ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dick Chenault" <dchenault@pdq.net> To: <COHUERFA-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 12:30 PM Subject: [COHUERFA] Oral History Project Update and Instructions Oral History Project First I would like to thank all the great volunteers who signed up to help in this project. So far, your feedback has been really positive and shows it is a very interesting endeavor. After proofing/typing one, you feel like you know the person involved. There is always a need for more help in this project, so those of you who have not signed up, please do so after you read the instructions below. I’m a two fingered typist, so I will try to make this easy for everyone. I’d like to introduce myself; I’m Dick Chenault, who Karen has asked to coordinate this project of getting the Oral Histories online. I retired a couple of years ago and moved to Huerfano County, Colorado from Texas. I have no ties to Huerfano County other than living here and wanting to help on Genealogy, so I’m not much help on the history other than what I learn along with you. As you know, Karen has done a magnificent job on Huerfano County. In doing my own research in Texas, and the south, I wish other County Coordinators were as accomplished as her. I took this project to help her as she is always swamped with other projects. Many of you know, Karen copied all these files in the early 1980’s and they have been in her file drawers since, waiting for us to help getting them online. Project Methods I call it methods as opposed to instructions as each of you may know more about how to do this than I. We, Karen, Louise Adams, and I, just finished putting the 14,000 obituary index cards online using a similar method. If you find a way to improve on this, please share it with all of us. All of the interviews have been typed, so there is no listening to tapes involved. Unfortunately, some of the copies are light or faded, and some are very marked up with pencil corrections. These will require full retyping as I’m unable to scan them through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. If you are on dial-up and/or prefer to type from a printed copy, I’ll make copies of these and mail them to you to type. Obviously there is more cost involved in this, so we try to keep it to a minimum. The preferred method is to send everything by email to those on high speed internet. This is done with two types of files. The first is a Word document where I have run the complete interview through OCR software trying to recover as much as possible. I find that about 75% or more of the words come through on those that I try. Unfortunately some of the formatting does not. And for some reason, one or two pages may be totally out of whack and almost useless. All in all, I think it is worthwhile and is up to you to decide whether to use the OCR document to edit or just totally retype. As I mentioned, a two fingered typist wants all the help he can get. The second type of files are the images of the scanned pages. I find it is better to scan each page individually and send them separately. There will be a jpeg file for each page of the interview. Some are more than 30 pages, as such, I will send the pages in multiple emails as many servers don’t like emails with many attachments. Usually I will send about 7-10 pages per email. After I scan them, I have to rename them, so you will have pages named like Jones, Al.jpg, Jones, Al (1).jpg, Jones, Al (2).jpg etc. where actually the first page has no numerical number attached (in red) and page 2 has the (1) designator. Sorry but this is the way Windows renames files. You can then either save these files to a temporary subdirectory by right clicking them and saving, or open them from in the email. OK, now we have the two types of files I’ll be sending by email. You can either print all the images (.jpg files), or split your screen to view both. Split screen is the method we used on the Obituary Project. First, open the OCR Word document in Word and reduce your screen using the button adjacent to the red X, or close button, on the top right of your screen. This reduces Word to less than full screen and you can stretch or reduce each side to fit in the bottom half of your screen, full width. Next open the image file, page 1 and make it fit in the top part of your screen using the same method. Now you have the image on top and the document on the bottom. You can scroll through the top and edit the bottom at the same time. It takes a little getting used to, but in the end we found the best method short of printing all the documents. You can see when we did 14,000 cards we couldn’t print them all. You may find it easier to print your images, but this gives you an option. Formatting: Most interviews are between two or more people. You can lead each persons response with their initials, or their name. To save space, we do not double space all the lines, just between persons. You can go online to the Huerfano page and under Personals look at Maria Batuello’s interview, which is kind of our standard. Also in the OCR document, I have left at the top of each page, the page number in bold type; this is for your reference to link to the image pages I send also. Once the page has been proofed and/or typed, please remove the bold page number. When completed, send the typed/ proofed Word document only to both Karen and myself. Karen will review each file and upload to the internet. Email to: Karen Mitchell HYPERLINK "mailto:km1109@aculink.net"km1109@aculink.net Dick Chenault HYPERLINK "mailto:dchenault@pdq.net"dchenault@pdq.net I hope I have not confused anyone; I’m not the best online tutor for sure. I am always available to help anyone. I’ll leave all my contact information below, and feel free to call me anytime. I’m not always online; we all have other lives I hope. Finally, it is volunteers like you that make all of this possible. I’m sure you will enjoy each interview you complete, as well as those who are researching these individuals. We have about 130 of these to do, but with everyone taking a small part, it can be accomplished easily. I’ll be posting updates every few days to let you know how we are progressing. Right now, you are outrunning my ability to scan and email, so please bear with me and enjoy the break. If I become too much of a Taskmaster, let me know. I want this to be fun for all of us. Again, you are greatly appreciated, Dick Chenault Huerfano County Guy PO Box 652 Rye, CO 81069 719-252-1752 Verizon mbl 719-676-3311 res -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 11/27/2005