Atlantic City Free Public Library

The Atlantic City Free Public Library (ACFPL) conducted oral history interviews in 1978, at the advent of casino gambling in Atlantic City. The interviews were conducted with grant funding from the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), a program of the United States Department of Labor. ACFPL employee Cynthia Ringe was the project supervisor and conducted most of the interviews, with project assistants Marie Cooney and Sandra Miller. Dian Spitler, ACFPL Reference Librarian, summed up the purpose of the Living History Project: "[The Oral History Project serves] to capture the color and the atmosphere and the flavor of the times...[T]he way it felt to be alive at a time when the city was the Queen of Resorts...[W]e are going to shift our focus and start capturing now - ...the people like me, like you, who are watching the city go through its other transformation into, we hope again, the Queen of Resorts, and the city will be known all over the world again, with good connotations."

In October 2007 the Atlantic City Free Public Library hired Artist In the Sky, an aerial photography company from Lake Village, Indiana, to make a visual record of Atlantic City. The Library determined to do this as many changes were occurring in Atlantic City at the time; the Sands Casino was demolished just days after the photo shoot and Revel Entertainment was clearing land in the Inlet area for a new casino. Artist In the Sky captured the digital photographs in this collection on October 15, 2007 from a Cessna airplane using a Canon EOS-5D camera.

The Atlantic City Free Public Library (ACFPL) is a service of the City of Atlantic City. The ACFPL Alfred M. Heston Collection houses information and research materials about Atlantic City's unique cultural, economic, social and historical development. The ACFPL contracted with Dr. James Karmel of History Expressions to conduct an oral history project in 2008. Dr. James Karmel is a professional historian and author of "Gambling on the American Dream: Atlantic City and the Casino Era", which is based on oral history interviews he conducted from 2000-2006. He is an associate professor of history at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland. Dr. Karmel has written or presented four other papers on Atlantic City and the casino era. Dr. Karmel received his Ph.D. in History from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is Associate Professor of History at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland.