Join us Thursday evening, December 8, for our Christmas Bookfest – book signings at The Sparta Store.
Authors Kate Clay Bodeen(NCSH Award Winner Pat Crisp, Like a Moth to the Flame) and Dr. Suzanne Mellow Irwin(The Stratford Oaks Tales), as well as illustrator Zach Hamm(The Stratford Oaks Tales) will be here from 3:00 till 6:00 that afternoon. A representative from High Country Hospice will also have copies of their award-winning cookbook, Meals and Memories, available.
In addition to having your book signed, you’ll have a chance to learn about their upcoming projects.
Also, you’ll be able to check out the latest release from Star Route Books, Regimental History of the 61st NC Infantry. This is the second in our popular history book series and others are planned for release next year.
Our neighboring shops on Main Street will also have extended hours December 8. Be sure to stop by Backwoods Bean, Murphy’s Mercantile, and Studio Redwood that evening and support our local merchants and businesses.
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.
Thursday, June 2, from 3-6:00 pm, we’ll host book signings at The Sparta Store for two books we’ve helped with.
Dr. Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Zach Hamm, author and illustrator of the children’s book, The Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Gretchen, and Kate Clay Bodeen, author of Pat Crisp, Like a Moth to the Flame, a historical book about her grandfather, will be here. Both books are currently available at The Sparta Store, online and in-store.
The Museum is hosting Business After Hours for the Chamber of Commerce, but the food and drinks will in our store. It will definitely be a collaborative effort.
Come out and see everyone!
If you really need a reason to come out on a Thursday night, you might want to…
Support our local authors.
Check out the Education in Alleghany Exhibit at the Museum.
Listen to David, Gary, and Ernest play.
Talk to Bob and Debbie and learn about the services the Chamber and Library offer our community.
We look forward to seeing you on June 2!
If you’ve got a book you need help with, or just a good idea, contact us today!
ISI’s latest project is a 280-page book titledDescendants of William Black & Nancy Allison. It is a family history of the Black family here in Alleghany County and our largest book-design project to date. The book features over 100 photographs, letters and information on William and Nancy’s family, gathered by Lorene Sturgill of Piney Creek, North Carolina.
The book is a marriage of experience and new technology. We input the entire family history, scanned and optimized the photographs, built an index of descendants, and, after the initial order, plan to print the casebound books on-demand.
Cover design by Imaging Specialists, Inc. for Descendants of William Black and Nancy Allison
You may or may not know we’re not new to book printing. Imaging Specialists has a long history in books, from humble phone directories at R.R. Donnelley in Portland Oregon, to high-end, leather bound, Easton Books at Nicholstone in Nashville, Tennessee, we’ve shot more book pages than most shops our size.
Thousands of titles passed through our lenses during our years in Greensboro.
We’re not even new at family histories, either. For years we shot pages to imposition for Craftsman, Delmar, Edwards & Broughton, and other North Carolina printers on our projection step-and-repeat systems. Sometimes it was the only way to copy them.
It’s this experience that helps us to anticipate many problems before they arise. This is the first of several titles we will be publishing this year.
Interested in producing your own book? You don’t have to go to the Triangle or even the Triad. Give us a call to find out how easy it can be.
The Descendants of William Black & Nancy Allison will be available later this month.
Choose and Cut day is this Saturday the 4th. The Sparta Store is having a sale, in conjunction with many other events in the County.
We’ll be giving 15% off all of our selection of things to celebrate with, like Christmas Cards and Ornaments, and for gifts, our ceramic tiles. Our prints, which also make great gifts, are 25% off.
In addition to our sale, our new neighbor, the Alleghany Historical Museum, is celebrating its grand opening, Saturday. They will be open from 10am till 5pm with a ribbon cutting at 2pm. There will be a reception at the Alleghany Jubilee afterward.
While you’re in town for the museum and our sale, be sure to stop by all the other shops on Main Street to see what goodies everyone else has, too. And don’t forget to come back to the Jubilee that night!
Also on this action packed Saturday, there will be a craft fair at the Emerson Black Building at the Justice Carlisle Higgins Fairgrounds from 9am-4:30pm, and in addition to the show at the Jubilee, The Vision Band will be playing at Silver Dollar Music Park at 8pm.
Then you can go home and relax. It’ll be a busy day.
