Three projects in historic preservation—a book of postcards from an era when every Hoosier town had a train depot; a digital archive of images that recalls the often stark "ordinariness" of the mid-20th century; and an interactive CD-ROM that brings to life the first half century of African-American cinematic art—are gifts for scholars as well as a wide range of armchair historians. To paraphrase IU historian Eric Sandweiss, in these projects--for just a moment--the past becomes impossibly present.