Archives
A herd of reindeer in Seattle? It happened. These reindeer, photographed in Seattle, may have been part of a government relief effort in the winter of 1897-1898. The expedition was launched when news reached the public that numerous miners, lured to Alaska in the hopes of striking it rich during the Klondike Gold Rush, were stranded in Dawson City, Canada, with supply lines cut off for the winter. If these reindeer were part of that expedition, they and their herders…
It’s harvest season, and Northwest Digital Heritage recently reaped and baled 50,000 more records and shipped them to the Digital Public Library of America! This metadata harvest garnered: More than 40,000 records from the State Library of Oregon’s Government Publications Highlights include COVID-19 information in over 40 languages and an excellent video on hop production in Oregon. Baker County Library District’s Digital Archive Highlights include landscape and mining scenes from Oregon’s Elkhorn Mountains, and Baker City’s Main Street from the…
Washington State Archives, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, is awarding $698,510 in grants to 37 government agencies statewide as part of the Local Records Grant Program for 2021-2022. The Local Records Grant Program helps local-government agencies and entities upgrade their technological resources to improve their records retention and management, and response processes for public records requests. Qualified agencies and entities applied online in June 2021. During the summer, an Archives Oversight Committee, composed of county…
Congratulations to six Washington tribes that received American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act grants through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)! In October 2021, IMLS announced it has awarded over $15.2 million in ARP grants to institutions across the country to support native communities, museums, and libraries that are recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. The six Washington tribes include: Colville ($50,000) The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Nespelem is planning to provide trusted spaces and deliver programs…
In fall 2021 the Washington State Heritage Center Trust became the ALL Foundation of Washington (ALL Foundation). The Washington State Heritage Center Trust was established in 2008 as a 501(c)(3) to fund and support Washington State Library, Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL), Legacy Washington, and Washington State Archives programs and collections. The ALL Foundation builds on the work of the trust to promote history, community, and preservation statewide, and serve as the fiduciary of funds raised specifically to…
Librarians at Washington State Library are often found serving their customers at one of several microfilm machines, carefully searching among hundreds of Washington newspapers past and present for that elusive article or photo. Sometimes a diligent search can reveal a serendipitous and very curious find, which can make a librarian’s entire day. For example, the front page of the Nov. 7, 1957, Bremerton Sun shows a young animal-rights activist named Mary Ann Olander (age 7 1/2) along with her dog,…
Since 2007, Washington State Library has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to numerous public, academic, tribal, and special libraries statewide. The grants enable these libraries — often in cooperation with local museums, historical societies, community organizations, and private individuals — to digitize historically significant photographs, documents, and artifacts in order to preserve them and make them accessible to people all over the world. In 2020, Washington State University’s (WSU) Holland/Terrell Libraries received a Washington Digital Heritage Grant…
A new Washington-Oregon partnership is helping cultural institutions across the Pacific Northwest make their digital archives more visible and accessible nationwide. Northwest Digital Heritage (NWDH), a Washington State Library, State Library of Oregon, and Oregon Heritage Commission collaboration, is leveraging the infrastructure and best practices of the Washington Rural Heritage project to expand public access and visibility to cultural heritage organizations in the Pacific Northwest. NWDH operates as a service hub of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which…
“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” “You fight & die but can’t vote at 18.” These were just a couple of the slogans from the movement to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, which ultimately led to the 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by…
From the 1930s through at least the 1950s, there was tension between “public power” advocates and supporters of privately owned power utilities. The tension is reflected in the fact that many counties and municipalities own and operate their own public utilities, while Spokane’s electrical power comes from a publicly traded corporation called Avista (formerly Washington Water Power [WWP]). In 2021 Eastern Regional Branch Archivist Lee Pierce uncovered a nearly forgotten collection that provides researchers with something of an insider’s view…