SOCAL-L Archives

Archiver > SOCAL > 1999-08 > 0934689777-02


From: William E Widrig <>
Subject: Downtown L.A. Research Sites
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 21:02:57 -0700


I want to mention that I forgot the other day about the Hall of Records.
I was very frustrated by the long wait to use the printing viewer (the
only working printing viewer). Instead of the hassle of looking for the
film, waiting forever and only having 20 minutes on a broken machine, you
can put in an order with the staff. It is the same 57 a page, but I
don't know what you would get. I am not interested in the boiler plate
stuff. I want names, dates and locations and maybe the outcome of the
whole thing. I don't know how good the staff's judgment might be, but I
am not terribly optimistic. Some files only have 10 or 12 pages others
seem endless (at 57 a page).

On Thur. 8/12/99 I got to the Central Library about noon. I checked the
1880 Iowa Soundex first with no luck, but with the new viewers it only
takes a short time to check. As the library refuses to put any
instructions in the cubicle (I was told a former head librarian felt it
looked tacky) I will attempt to explain how the machine works. Start by
pulling the carriage towards you so that it is easy to work with. You
take your reel of film and put it on the shaft on the left side with the
film coming off the top unwinding clockwise. You put it under the first
roller and push it about 3/4 of the way under the class. You check that
your takeup reel is the correct width (16mm or 35mm). If it is wrong
there is a star wheel under and to the front of the reel that changes it.
When everything is set you press the little blue lever to the left
(towards the film reel) and it will feed the film to the take up reel.
Once you see the frames you can push the carriage back in until the frame
is centered under the lens. You have your usual page orientation, zoom
and focus in the lens assembly. The green button under the screen is the
print button which prints cleaner copy than before. There is no coin or
card slot yet so you pay at the desk. My neighbor had a paper jam which
took about a half hour for staff to fix, and I had the film double back
on me when I unloaded a 16mm film.

I wanted the Great Registers for L.A. County I had just been looking at
it the other day, but now I couldn't find them. I had looked up the
number NR 979.41 L88 Grea-1, and when I went to the Cabinets I found a
lot of cities starting with "San" but not L.A. I had to ask the woman at
the desk. She is Asian and not that sharp with viewer problems in my
estimation, but she knows where things are kept. She took me back to the
cabinets, and it turned out L.A. is misfiled under NR 979.40. I was told
later that as they get new film they have to move things forward and they
tend to be behind most of the time in updating the labels on the drawers.

Having checked the Tulare Great Registers before I thought L.A. County
was quite different. It is broken down into cities and unincorporated
areas by precinct. Even though Duarte or some of the other places were
not cities until recently they are in the Great Register. If you don't
know what a place was called way back then they have precinct maps which
I haven't had to check out yet. I saw Lamanda, and I don't think most
people who live there today would know where it is. Lakewood may or may
not have been a place name way back when. I checked 1922 and 1934 for
Long Beach Monrovia and Pasadena. Monrovia was a breeze, Pasadena
wasn't bad, but Long Beach takes awhile (273 precincts in 1934). I would
estimate an hour to go through Long Beach if the viewer is working well.
Pray you don't need to find somebody in the city of L.A. You definitely
want to check the precinct maps first if you do. For the most part 1
page is 1 precinct with the odd precinct running 2 pages. The cities are
in alphabetical order and numerical order for the precincts within. The
names are then in alphabetical order in the precinct and broken out very
nicely with a capital letter and spacing so that it is easy to find what
you are looking for.

The information on the page is Last Name, First name, occupation, address
and political affiliation. When you get the film out of the cabinet
there is information on 3 surfaces. This can save you a lot of work if
you are aware of it and approach it logically. If you have a name and
location you can go to the year and pull up the location by looking at
the flat surface with the yellow label. That might be Acton-Pacoima,
Pasadena-Whittier and Los Angeles will usually be on 2 separate (half of
the) films.

It is frustrating when you get near the end of the reel and the thing
won't feed any more film. For the last 50 frames or so the answer is to
feed it manually with your index finger.

All for this time,




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