At the Library: History canbe found online at the library

If you haven’t visited Whitman Heritage Digital Collections found on the Whitman County Library website (whitcolib.org), you may be surprised to find that the local collection consists of more than 5,000 Whitman County images.

WCL is just one of the many organizations in the state that digitizes and posts local historical images online with the help of a grant through Washington Rural Heritage, a community memory project headquartered at the Washington State Library. The full state project holds more than 37,000 images — all available to browse free online.

Each year, Whitman County Library submits a grant proposal for the funding of the project. The grant covers wages for a project manager as well as supplies and equipment. WCL has purchased multiple items, including an Epson scanner, a smaller portable scanner, a digital camera and recording equipment. The state also provides training and support. It’s a remarkable program with a large impact.

Past projects have included not only scanning and digitizing images to add to the online collection, but also creating large physical prints, showcasing local history for display around the county. The Whitman County Courthouse, Whitman County Superior Court, Colfax Natural Resource Conservation Service, and several WCL branches all house canvas- or foam-backed images made possible through the Washington State Digital Grant.

With the support of the grant, we’ve visited local organizations, clubs, retirement communities and the WCL branches where patrons and other community members learn more about Whitman Heritage Digital Collections. A slide presentation, hands-on navigation of the site and a lot of sharing is all part of the program. Information is provided for community members wanting to become part of the project by contributing images from their own collections.

To visit the collection, go online to the Whitman County Library website (whitcolib.org) and scroll until you reach the Whitman Heritage link. From there you can browse, search, zoom in and even print featured photographs. Each image has accompanying information that provides you access to the name of the contributor, the location and date (or circa date) of the photograph, the original size of the image, a copyright date and a description. You can search by a specific term or just browse.

A portion of the images on our site come from personal photographs, albums and private collections brought in and shared by local families. Other images are acquired on trips we’ve made to scan items at museums, schools, clubs and similar institutions. The library doesn’t physically archive the photographs. These are returned to the contributor once they’ve been scanned, along with the digital copies on a thumb drive.

If you are interested in having some of your historic family, business or town photographs represented in the online collection, we’re happy to meet with you. Reach out to Whitman County Library to speak with us.

In April there will be two presentations of the project open to the public; one at the Albion Branch of WCL on from 6-7 p.m. April 23, and a second at the Whitman County Genealogical Society Spring Mini-Seminar at Bishop Place from 9:30-10:30 a.m. April 27, in Pullman.

Buchholtz is the cataloging and acquisitions specialists for Whitman County Rural Library district.