From 3 to 5 in the afternoon, regional authors will be appearing for book signings at downtown shops. Preceding the event, from 2 to 3, Becca’s Backwoods will host a Young Writers’ Workshop.
At 5:30, Friends of the Alleghany Public Library will hold a reception at the library.
Alleghany Community Television, or ACTV, is now streaming content at ACTV.ME.
That’s right, those great, local shows you’ve been trying to catch will now be available for download to your own device at your convenience. ACTV has teamed with PegCentral and Imaging Specialists to present single episodes of participating programs on their site.
The new On Demand page will be available at www.actv.me – a new web address that should be easier to remember (and spell!) than the main site address, alleghanycommunitytelevision.com.
ACTV will soon begin uploading broadcast data to Skybest TV so that, as they standardize the schedule, viewers can plan for upcoming broadcasts. Metadata for individual episodes will be added including content, producers, show credits, run times, production dates, etc. and will be displayed online or on TV broadcast schedules.
Station Manager Charlie Scott – “The streaming ability we’ve gained with our latest equipment upgrade will allow our station to be accessed by anyone who isn’t able to see us on our affiliate stations. The systems that presently air ACTV content include Alleghany Cablevision, Skybest TV, Surry TV and WilkesTelecommunications. Those systems deliver ACTV to roughly 7000 households in the mountain region and cover a viewing area ranging from around Lewisville, North Carolina, almost to Johnson City, Tennessee.”
The Internet, however, reaches viewers outside the Triad to Tri-City area. Now, of course, ACTV content will be available to the entire planet. It’s hard to say what browsers in Britain will think about a Sparta Town Council Meeting, or how the Alleghany County Extension Office Cooking Show will affect a surfer in South Africa, but you can be sure these and other shows will have an audience.
Imaging Specialists is pleased to be working with Alleghany Community Television in their efforts to inform and entertain the public- from Piney Creek to Prague, from Turkey to Turkey Knob!
Imaging Specialists has won a prestigious Garland P. Stout Publishers Award for excellence in the field of publishing from the North Carolina Society of Historians. This is the second Publishing Award for ISI. We received the first one in 2009 for our work in Alleghany County’s Sesquicentennial.
Regimental History of the 26th North Carolina. Cover Painting of Picketts charge by Edwin Forbes at US Library of Congress.
The Society also honored us with a Willie Parker Peace History Book Awardfor the book, Regimental History of the 26th NC Infantry, that we produced this summer, about Ashe County men in the Civil War. We gathered the text, photos, battle maps and battle summaries for the book; laid out and re-set the text; and optimized the photos for the book which is now available on-demand from Star Route Books and in our shop in Sparta.
We were also fortunate to receive a Robert Bruce Cooke Family History Book Award for our own, Family Photos – Eli Hamilton Halsey and Lillian Blanche Smith. This book is a photographic record of our own family, developed with the help of my Dad, Ronald Halsey’s, archive of negatives and our family’s photos. We scanned all images and assembled them into a chronological record of the lives of my Great-Grandparents and their family. The casebound book is printed in color and includes images from old prints, tintypes, 4×5 negatives, 35 mm and digital photography.
It is true that this “labor-of-love” will never have mass-appeal, but it was a real learning experience for us in the field of on-demand, self-publishing and we couldn’t be more proud of the result.
We also share in an award the Society presented to the Alleghany Historical – Genealogical Society. For the third year, AHGS has won a Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award, for the quarterly newsletter that we produce. The newsletter regularly includes text and historic photography from the county and this year, we’ve started adding our own photos of the Alleghany Historical Museum’s loans and acquisitions.
We are also pleased to have helped Lorene Sturgill, who received a Robert Bruce Cooke Family History Book Award for Descendants of William Black and Nancy Allison (We helped with photographic scanning, typesetting, page layout, design and production). This 296-page, casebound book containing genealogical records, photographs and stories is arguably our largest book project yet.
Of course, ISI has generated film for thousands of titles over the years, including many family histories and multi-volume sets, but this is the largest in which we’ve handled all aspects of the prepress work from design to production. The book is also available, on-demand from Star Route Books and the Sparta Store.
Congratulations Lorene, Kay, and Thelma for the recognition of your work and thanks for letting us be a part of your projects.
Lastly, we are happy to have played a part in the joint project of the Alleghany Historical – Genealogical Society and the Sparta Revitalization Committee‘s downtown Sparta walking tour, The Story of Sparta.
Window Decals designed and printed by ISI for the Sparta Revitalization Committee
We originally designed the SRC’s logo and were able to incorporate it into the vinyl, window decals for the self-guided tour. We are also pleased to have provided the cover photography for the Hospice’s Meals and Memories cookbook. Both projects won Paul Green Multimedia awards.
The Fodder Trot Trail Corn Maze will be under way before you know it and this year’s theme is the NEW RIVER! The maze will include lots of neat river features and information. ISI has helped with signage and banners and even the website for Corn-Central, USA.
We’re joining the New River bandwagon, this summer with the National Geographic New River Blueway Maps. These Waterproof, Tear-resistant Maps are the best we’ve ever seen. They follow the entire length of the New from North Carolina to West Virginia. Nat-Geo has produced a functional map no clear-water canoe enthusiast should be without.
We also now carry The New River Atlas, a book by the Virginia Canals & Navigations Society thatdetails the New River along its path from its Blue Ridge head waters to the Kanawha River. According to the Society’s website, the book includes lots of science, history and “the best river maps EVER.”
Come to the Blue Ridge this summer to wiggle your toes in the cleanest, clearest water on the planet, and stop by Imaging Specialists for your all your navigational needs!
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So what’s wrong with using a free hosting company?
