Adventures in Research

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week researching. In fact, I’m headed back to the library to look through old newspapers this morning, too. I came looking for specifics about the Huntingdon Home for Orphan and Friendless Children, a private “orphanage” that began in the late 1800s but did so much more than take in orphaned children. Really they were a ministry to poor and neglected children whether their parents had died or not. 

At first it seemed as if there would be few details to find. Then Kelly, head of the Huntingdon County Historical Society, decided to call her predecessor, Nancy Shedd, who has done extensive research herself into the orphan home. 

Nancy graciously met me and as we talked through what was known, she suddenly thought of a place she hadn’t searched for documents--the Juniata College archives. She made a phone call. Later that afternoon, the archivist emailed us both with a list of items in her possession. Nancy and I made our way to see them on Friday. And what a treasure trove we found! I came away with most of what I wanted to find out, and with a new friend as well. It is always fun to spend time with others who share your passion for research, especially when it is on the same topic!

And the really cool thing about Nancy? Her great-grandmother was the first matron of the home after the founder, David Emmert, relinquished that role!

I love how God connects me with just the right people when I venture into these adventures of research!

Google Books to Kindle

A month or so ago, my friend and fellow writer Laurie AliceEakes posting on Colonial Quills about how to use Google books for research. I’d dabbled in Google books, but her article helped me figure out how to find what was really useful to me.

But I still wasn’t happy. I could read those old research books on my phone or my computer, but I needed to be more flexible and spend less time reading from a backlit screen. If only I could get those books on my kindle, I thought. They would be easy to read and portable, as well as have a highlighting and note-taking feature.

But was there a way to do that? I searched “google books to kindle.” The blog post I clicked on mentioned Calibre.

Way back in February, Rachel in my historical writers email group touted this free program for organizing your ebook library. Cool, I thought. I downloaded it but didn’t really have time to figure out how it worked or why I would need it with my kindle. I kind of forgot about it. Now I pulled it back up, spent some time figuring out how to navigate things and poof! Those ancient research books appeared on my kindle!

Want to know how? Here are the steps.

Download Calibre.

From the Calibre home screen, click on Get Books. Select Stores. Select Google Books.

If you have already found books on Google books and have them in saved in your library, click “my library” to access them. If not, search for the books you need.

Click on the book title. On the right side of the screen, click Read Now.

From the choices, select “Download to my computer.” There will be two options: EPUB and PDF. Some books won’t have the EPUB option, but that’s okay. Calibre’s beauty is it imports, converts, and exports in many different formats! (I did find that a few books didn’t download correctly as EPUB, but for those I just went back and downloaded them as PDFs.)

Once they appear on Calibre, you can edit the meta data for each title. Most of it will download correctly, but one piece of info I wanted that didn’t download automatically was publication date, so I always went in and corrected that.

Now click Convert. I left all the settings as they were, just changing the export format to MOBI.

Attach your kindle to your computer via USB. The Calibre should recognize it. Then click Send to Device and then Main Memory. The PDF files can go to your kindle as they are. (I worried about this because I had tried to read a PDF on my kindle before and hated it because the text lines didn’t fit the screen. But I haven’t had that same trouble with these old titles.) A check mark will appear beside the titles that have gone to your kindle.

I’m so excited to have these old books in a readable and portable format. I don’t have to worry about faded words in front of my eyes or crumbling pages in my hands. And I get to delve into the past in the words of those who lived there. I can’t imagine anything better as I search for new stories to tell.

My Cool Twitter Story

Social media. Love or hate it, I think it is here to stay. And in spite of some issues with it, there are some really cool things about it, too. I jumped into Facebook pretty quickly. Fun to reconnect with people I hadn’t seen in years. I especially enjoyed catching up with high school friends before our 25^th reunion. It made the time so much more fun because we could disperse with all those initial questions.

For some reason I was more hesitant with Twitter. But I finally dove in. Not long after, as I began to connect with people, a pastor at a church we attended as young marrieds followed me. I followed him back. At some point he retweeted something of mine. All of a sudden my twitter account showed a new follower. I didn’t recognize the name. Then a direct message popped up, signed with a first and last name, a name I hadn’t seen in years. And I cried.

Long ago, as young mothers, I’d confided in my friend Becky my dream to write historical fiction. She had declared her willingness to help with any research I needed to do. More babies arrived. She moved away. I completely lost touch with my friend as the years passed.

It felt so good to be reconnected with her. We emailed. We even called. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted time to catch up, to hear her journey through the years, to share mine. She mentioned that her offer of research still stood. And in my mind, a plan hatched. A research trip I needed to take would put me close to her house. And it would help to have another set of eyes and ears and hands for note taking. And at meals and at night, we could catch up without any time limits.

So today she is with me on our way to Indianapolis. I’m so grateful for the gift of friendship—for the friends that have been there in the past, the ones I have now, and the ones God has prepared for me in the future. But there is something very sweet in the gift of a friendship rediscovered after so many years. I’m so glad God prepares good gifts for His children!

Have you ever “rediscovered” a friendship from the past? How did you happen to reconnect?

Thank You, Dr. Onuf!

Long ago, in my college days at SMU, my history professor advisor for my senior thesis asked my next step in the field. Where did I see myself after graduation? Grad school? I shyly revealed to him my ultimate goal in the field of history: to write historical fiction. To my amazement, he didn’t laugh or sneer. Instead, he gave me a piece of advice I’ve held onto all these years. He said, steep yourself in a time period and then write from what you know of it.

I’ve now written two novels for publication set in the years just prior to and including World War I, but I still don’t feel “steeped” in the time period. So I’ve been reading more. The problem is, information is hard to find. The 1910s to 1920 is proving elusive. Oh, there are a few books here and there on the political climate, especially the reason for and situations leading up to WWI, or the military issues of WWI, but other than that, not much. I did recently happen across a few books in a used bookstore, but most of the information on women, their roles and their mindsets, comes from the radical side—and not all women fit into that category. But remembering back to my years as a history major, I remain undaunted in my search. I’m trying to read between the lines, trying to track down documentation of women’s lives in their own words. I want to create characters that are not just believable but also historically accurate. And honestly, as frustrating as it has been, I love every minute of it!

So I want to say thank you to Dr. Peter Onuf. His advice continues to echo in my head as I research a time period from which to create stories.

Back in Time

I went on a researching trip the other day. Back to the library of my alma mater, to the site of my first post-college “real” job. (Ok, so it was the only “real” job I ever held!) But besides a very fun lunch with former co-workers I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, my favorite part was my time in the West stacks. 

You see, when they updated and added on to the library building, they left the original one, incorporating the old into the new. Thus, the West stacks are the old library—even before I was there! No windows. Old study carrels. No computers. Narrow staircases leading from one floor to the next, unless you are brave enough to get on the small elevator that services that building.

The dust and eerie quiet and the buzzing florescent lighting brought a thrill. My fingers touched books held by long-gone co-eds and cataloguers, making me feel a part of all those who had used those books and walked between those shelves over the years. Because while I love the history I find in the books, sometimes what I really love is the history of the books. Wondering who held them, read them, checked them out—and why. Did they get a good grade on the paper? Did they discover the answer to a question that plagued them? Maybe they gossiped or flirted or cried behind the open covers.

In the end, I had more to do than time to do it, so I’ll be making another trip back. But that doesn’t bother me. That library draws me. I think it’s because I feel more than other people’s history within its walls. I also feel the ghost-of-me-past walking alongside. Idealistic. Full of dreams of what life would bring. A few years ago I wouldn’t have wanted to meet that girl again. These days, she’s a welcome companion. Maybe because I recognize so much of her in my children. Maybe because after all this time some of those dreams are being fulfilled. Whatever it is, I’m glad my path has taken me back to that place, for so many reasons.

What about you? Is there a place that evokes that idealistic, full of dreams, on the cusp of life you? Or is there a place where history feels close, as if you could pull aside a thin curtain and step into another era?  

When Work is Play

We went on vacation to Colorado a couple of weeks ago. And I determined it really would be a vacation. I didn’t even take my laptop! Granted, I wasn’t completely unplugged. I still had my blackberry for emails and my ipod touch for facebook and twitter and reading blogs and stuff. But for the most part, I relaxed.

We played games. (I lost every one.) We hiked a bit. (I did it, even if I didn’t like it!) We watched movies and read. (Four books in seven days. Now that’s what I call a vacation!) And a couple of afternoons, my husband and I journeyed into the town to scrounge up a bit of history, for that is what we love.

And did we find a treasure trove! Not only were many of the buildings along the main strip built in the early 1900s, but the historical society also had a nice little (free!) museum with quite an array of artifacts. I took more pictures of those than of the waterfalls and other vistas we viewed. Oh—and we browsed two antique stores, marveling at the finds we couldn’t justify paying money to own.

To some (like my teenaged sons), that might not sound like much fun. But when it comes to research, my work is play. With each new piece of history, be it information or artifact, my mind automatically churns back to another era. I file away the details, the feel, the smells. I imagine a character, a scene, a story. I get lost in the possibilities. And since vacation is about doing what you enjoy instead of what has to be done, I guess I was blessed to be able to spend my time doing just that, even if it doesn’t sound like much fun to anyone else!

Reading vs. Writing

Catching up after Christmas and doing another round of edits on my book didn’t leave much time for reading in January. In fact, I only read two books. I can’t remember the last time that’s happened. I tend to average 4-5 books per month. I have for years and years. Yet here am I with February half-gone and I have yet to close a back cover and wish the story hadn’t ended.

It’s a hard thing, I’m learning, to balance the reading and the writing. I love to read. I hate not to read. And yet there are only so many hours in a day. And this coming from one who always reads at least a chapter before bed and carries a book with me at all times for those “unexpected” free moments! My “to read” stacks are growing higher, even as I’m longing to re-read some old favorites. How did I get in this mess?

Oh, yeah. I wanted to write. Isn’t every dream a double-edged sword? And here is mine. Maybe I need to talk my husband into a beach vacation this summer, even though neither of us cares for the beach. At least it would be time with nothing to do but read. Unless, of course, we found a historical site to visit.

On second thought, maybe a research trip would be as fun as a reading one!

Gleaning Historical Tidbits

I love learning about history. Not the history you learn in textbooks, necessarily, although knowledge of those things is an important background. I love the little things. The obscure things. Things important to the people of a specific time and place but not noted by the country or the world. That’s why I love the Dallas History Conference.

This year we learned all kinds of cool things—about the fact that SMU had a medical and pharmaceutical school that opened and closed its doors before the undergraduate liberal arts school had its first class, about the red light district in Dallas from 1910-1913 and the efforts that brought about its demise, about the outlaw Shilo Scrivnor, about the long-forgotten Long’s Lake pleasure park, and about “Dad” Garrett and his inventions. What? You haven’t heard of most of that?

Precisely! Isn’t that fun? While none of those actual topics may find their way into my stories, I learned lots of little things—like the name of one of the biggest employers in Dallas in the early 1900s, several bank robberies that occurred in Dallas in the late 1910s and early 1920s, what hospitals were up and running in Dallas in the early 1900s and some of early medical men whose legacies remain today. I learned some of the history of traffic signals and radio stations and fire and police alarms and an African-American newspaper. Tidbits that can enhance a story and that are just plain fun to know!

Here’s a bonus for you: Did you know that the first car in Dallas was delivered by train to Terrell then driven to Dallas? It took 5 hours and 10 minutes to make that drive!

Someday I’ll have more time to research on my own, but gleaning from the research of others is an amazing thing, too. I’m so glad I live in a place where I can take advantage of that!

The Best $5 I've Ever Spent

When my mother handed me the information for the Heritage Farmstead Museum, I knew it was a place I needed to go to further understand farm life at the turn of the century—the 20^th century. Finally I had a free day and took off. They only do docent-guided tours at 1:30, but I showed up at 12:30 to look around the grounds for a little while on my own. I took pictures and imagined my characters living and working in such a place. 

At 1:30, no docent had arrived. Finally, at 1:45, the director of the museum came to give me the tour herself. So there I was with this wonderful historian, just her and I, walking through this enormous museum-house and discussing what would be available to an average person and when they might own it, admiring the reproduction paint colors and wallpapers, and studying the original furnishings, clothing, toys, etc. As we talked, I discovered that she has done research on the home front during World War I. She invited me to come back and visit with her about that another day. My conversation with her as well as all I saw in the house was absolutely invaluable and would have been enough to make my $5 worthwhile. But when we stepped outside, this lovely lady handed me off to the Executive Director of the Museum, who took me around the rest of the buildings in the “farm yard.” 

Again, a fascinating historian who answered every question I threw at him. At the end, he gave me his card and an invitation to call or email as well as the name of the director of another such place that focused more on town buildings and would be another good source of information. Two hours of individual attention from two historians steeped in the time period I am working in. See what I mean? Definitely the best $5 I’ve ever spent!