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Alleghany Television Goes Worldwide!

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!

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UPDATE: Alleghany Library’s ReadFest POSTPONED

UPDATE: Due to the weather, the event has been postponed. We’ll let you know when it is rescheduled.

Monday afternoon, on Oct. 29, we’ll be a part of ReadFest at Alleghany County Public Library. The event will start at 1:00 and last till 4:00. Come out and join us and other local authors. (Suzanne Irwin will be there, as well.)

We’ll have copies of our history books and Paths and Passages with us, if you haven’t seen them yet. We’ll also have information on Star Route Books and publishing, if that’s something you’re considering.

We look forward to seeing you at the Library on Monday!

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ISI Receives Awards from NCSH

If you came to the release party for Paths & Passages -Navigating the Blue Ridge and Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Gretchen, you’ve heard our latest news. If you weren’t able to attend, here it is:

Imaging Specialists Inc - 2012 NCSH AwardsSaturday, the 20th, we traveled to Mooresville, NC for the annual awards banquet of the North Carolina Society of Historians. Imaging Specialists was well represented this year: Claire Halsey was awarded a Paul Jehu Barringer, Jr. & Sr. Award of Excellence for her genealogy work and Jeff Halsey was named the NCSH Historian of the Year!

ISI also received a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award for the latest book in our history series, Regimental History of the 61st NC Infantry (published last fall) about Alleghany County men in the Civil War. We gathered 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.

Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Zach Hamm, with their families, also attended the meeting and won awards for the first in their series of children’s books, The Stratford Oaks Tales. Zach received a Paul Green Multimedia Award for his artwork and Suzanne a Clark Cox Historical Fiction Award for the story.

A couple of projects of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society also won awards. We were proud to accept awards for the newsletter- our fourth!- Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award and the Alleghany Historical Museum, which won an Evelina D. Miller Museum Award.

Elizabeth Bray Sherrill, President NCSH and Jeff Halsey NCSH 2012 Historian of the Year

Imaging Specialists publishes the AHGS quarterly newsletters. We also produce the books in the Stratford Oaks series.

We plan to submit several projects and nominate others others in our community for consideration in 2013.

If you know of other projects you think deserve recognition, nomination forms are located on the NCSH site.

Imaging Specialists and the Halsey family is proud to have accepted these honors from the North Carolina Society of Historians. We sincerely appreciate the consideration of President Elizabeth Sherrill, the NCSH Board and the Judges. And we appreciate the help and support of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society.

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Book Release Party & Signing

Join us Monday, October 22, to celebrate the release of Paths & Passages and The Stratford Oaks Tales: The Tale of Clyde.

Dr. Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Illustrator Zach Hamm will be at The Sparta Store to sign the latest in their Stratford Oaks series.

Photographer Jeff Halsey will also have copies of the latest from Star Route Books, Paths & Passages, available.

Come by to see the new books and hear a few special announcements, as well.

We’ll have some goodies ready to eat and drink. Make your plans now to see us on the 22nd. The event will start at 3 and last till 6. But, if folks are hanging around visiting past then, we won’t run anybody off! We look forward to seeing you!