The Sports Turf Managers Association’s Historical Committee needs your help to identify the stadium in the accompanying photo. If you know anything about this stadium, please contact STMAinfo@STMA.org.
This is just one of the many historical images they are working to categorize. Now their daunting task is much more manageable thanks to a generous donation from Pioneer Athletics and additional funding authorized by the STMA Board of Directors.
Tasked with reviewing tens of thousands of slides amassed from collections of members and prominent academics, the Committee recommended to the STMA Board in 2015 that it authorize funding, in addition to Pioneer’s donation, to outsource the scanning of the entire collection. The Board approved funding at its Fall 2015 meeting.
The scanning process took nearly three months to complete. Post scanning, a temporary employee was hired to transfer data from the slide jacket to the electronic scan. The collection was then segmented into approximately 100 images per group. The Committee works on one group at a time through a file sharing service, first determining whether or not an image is significant to the profession or to the association. The images that are significant are then further identified by what/who is in them and then each image is uploaded to a PowerPoint slide where more information is added in the Speaker Notes section.
This may seem a bit laborious, but the process is really very streamlined. Imagine if the Committee had to load each slide into a slide projector to view or lay them on a light table and look through a magnifier!
Ultimately, the Committee plans to have an electronic “museum” where members can access the photos.