UP F RONT
Almanac photo by Michelle Le
Portola Valley town historian Nancy Lund checks out the bound volumes of the Almanac from the early 1970s to 2003 at the Portola Valley Library.
Almanac archives find new home By Dave Boyce Almanac Staff Writer
T
he Almanac and the town of Portola Valley have a shared history. The town was incorporated in 1965, the same year the Almanac published its first issue. For its first few months of existence, the paper’s founders assembled it at a Portola Valley kitchen table. So it may be fitting that the Almanac’s archives, bound volumes of old newspapers dating from the first issues up to 2003, have a new home in the Community Heritage Center in the Portola Valley library. (The first several years are not bound, but are available in flat files in a side room.) The archives include print photos, boxes of negatives organized by publication date for papers issued between April 1975 and March 2000, and a card catalog with references to stories and photos. For years, this material was stored at the Almanac offices. “We were running out of space and (Portola Valley Historian) Nancy Lund gracefully offered to take the archives,” Almanac
Publisher Tom Gibboney said in an interview. “She actually has done a lot of work on them that we never had the time to do.” “The town and the Almanac are almost the same age,” Ms. Lund told the Almanac in an interview at the library. “It sort
‘We consider it to be a rare and wonderful treasure, I can tell you.’ NANCY LUND, PORTOLA VALLEY TOWN HISTORIAN
of makes a nice place for them if they can’t be where they truly belong.” Asked to comment on the notion that the Almanac archives belonged in the Almanac offices, Mr. Gibboney said that Ms. Lund and her crew of volunteers “are much better custodians of these archives than we were, and (the archives) are much more usable.” While the card catalogs are in varying degrees of completeness, the collection of negatives appears to be missing only those photographs not taken by long-
time Almanac photographer Carol Ivie, who died in 2005. “There’s just a mystery because sometimes the negative is not there,” Ms. Lund said. “The only guess we have is that it was not taken by an Almanac photographer.” “They are just wonderfully organized,” she added. “Every little folder has a date on it of the issue of the paper.” There are print photos, too, hundreds of them that had been stored in Almanac file cabinets, more than a few without names. Ms. Lund said she sought help in identifying them from her counterparts Thalia Lubin of Woodside, Marion Oster of Atherton, and Frank Helfrich of Menlo Park. “I dragged them in here to take a look,” she said. “We consider it to be a rare and wonderful treasure, I can tell you.” Ms. Lund said she plans one last attempt, with veteran Almanac staff writers Marion Softky and Marjorie Mader, to identify the unidentified.
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THE ALMANAC (ISSN 1097-3095 and USPS 459370) is published every Wednesday by Embarcadero Media, 3525 Alameda de las Pulgas, Menlo Park, CA 940256558. Periodicals Postage Paid at Menlo Park, CA and at additional mailing offices. Adjudicated a newspaper of general circulation for San Mateo County, The Almanac is delivered free to homes in Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley and Woodside. Subscriptions for $60 per year or $100 per 2 years are welcome. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Almanac, 3525 Alameda de las Pulgas, Menlo Park, CA 94025-6558. Copyright ©2011 by Embarcadero Media, All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
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