When you hear "Galvescan" I imagine many people would start thinking: big brother, microchips, around the clock monitoring, the patriot act, and other radical espionage programs. For others, maybe that scene in Scanners where the dude's head blew up comes to mind.
To the conspiracy theorists and the Sci-fi marathonists, I say rest assured. Galvescan is a service that the Galveston Historical Foundation (GHF) is offering free to the public. Here's how it works: If you have some old (or not so old) pictures that you'd like to have scanned and archived for future Galvestonians to enjoy and study, Tom Green, Galvescan 2011 Coordinator, will pick them up from you, scan them, and return them to you with digital copies on a CD for you to keep.
If you've ever bought an old house or building, or even if you have a favorite that you'd like to know more about, you know the frustration of trying to gather materials and picture of the place. Some of these pictures could be used to restore a home or architectural detail; others could confirm former owners' identities. Well the GHF is trying to build a database of as many historic Galveston photos as possible so that future generations have another source to tell the history of this island.
I lost a lot of Galveston's historic photos and memorabilia to Hurricane IKE. It really made me sick to my stomach. What's more sickening is the total sum of Galveston's history lost in September of 2008. And it's not just storms. Every day, someone throws out a shoebox of photos due to divorce or death or apathy. Perhaps the one bit of information that you're looking for is in your neighbor's attic or in a shoebox underneath a bed at Holland House. If we all came together for this very worthy cause and had our Historic Galveston pictures and documents scanned, we could have some small piece of mind the next time our island floods or we read an obituary.
After all, a picture IS worth a thousand words.
For more information, go to the Galvescan website: https://sites.google.com/site/galvescan2011/
To schedule an appointment or pickup of pictures, email Tom at: Photos@GalvestonHistory.org
