Catskills Institute: New website, new content

Tracing the Tribe is delighted to announce that the new website of The Catskills Institute, created by Professor Phil Brown - its president - is now ready.

Phil, a Brown University sociology professor, and I met years ago when our daughter attended the school.

He's a Catskills kid whose parents were involved in the White Lake hotel industry, while my grandparents built a large, popular bungalow colony - Kauneonga Park - at the other end of the lake.

He also spoke at the IAJGS New York 2006 conference to a packed room.

Visit the new website here.

The Catskills Institute is very grateful to Brown University for its support through the Scholarly Technology Group and the Center for Digital Scholarship. Elli Mylonas, Ann Caldwell, Robin Ness, and Kerri Hicks spent countless hours developing this new archive and its website.

Thousands of items from the Catskills Institute Archives have been scanned in at high resolution, and accompanying metadata provides much useful background information.

Visitors can now search for all sort of materials by hotel or bungalow colony name, by type of object (e.g. menu, postcard, stationery) or by thumbnail.

Alfred Landis created beautiful drawings of Catskill properties for postcards and a whole section of the site is devoted to Landis' art. We know there was a Landis card for Kauneonga Park but no one seems to have a copy of it.

Catskills "kids" can post comments and queries on the bulletin board - no telling whom you might find from your childhood summers in the mountains!

Phil and many others have created this new archive and website which preserves the legacy of the Jewish Catskills. So many of us grew up there, either as annual summer visitors from the city or as year-round residents. Geneabloggers.com's Thomas MacEntee grew up in Liberty, not far from Kauneonga Lake.

There are plans to keep adding more material, so donations are always in order to provide for the addition of many additional origial materials and make more resources accessible.

Take a look at the site and leave a comment, ask a question, enjoy the site and its resources.

Postcard Festival: Wheels go round and round!

If postcards of bygone days and modern subjects interest you, make sure to see the first Festival of Postcards at Evelyn Yvonne Theriault's blog, A Canadian Family.

The new carnival is for bloggers to share their love of vintage and modern postcards, and some two dozen bloggers (some international) participated in this inaugural edition.

The topic was wheels, and entries showed bicycles, boats, cars and trains, water wheels and oil derricks, spinning wheels and amusement park rides. Cards included old black-and-white, shiny chrome, and subjects went from serious to funny.

Categories ranged from motorized transportation, non-motorized transportation, wheels in the workplace, to grab bag. Some two dozen bloggers participated. See the article link above.

The deadline for the next Postcard Festival is June 20, and the topic is Main Street. Interpret it literally or creatively. The post should contain the front and back of the card, its size and other details.

Another way to participate is an article on the topic of deltiology. Evelyn asks bloggers to share their expertise and passion and answer why you collect cards, how you got started and whether your collection serves a specific purpose.

Sounds like this Postcard Festival may really fly! I'm guessing "wings" will be a future topic.