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Category: State Library Collections

WASHINGTON STATE LIBRARY SPONSORS UW CAPSTONE STUDENTS

WASHINGTON STATE LIBRARY SPONSORS UW CAPSTONE STUDENTS

Every year, members of Washington State Library’s (WSL) Library Development team sponsor student projects that help support the work of the State Library. University of Washington (UW) iSchool Capstone projects are the culmination of the students’ learning experience at the iSchool. The students distill the knowledge and skills acquired in academic courses and apply them to real-world projects. For Shawn Schollmeyer, Washington Digital Newspapers Coordinator, iSchool Capstone students pitched their ideas for a Washington Digital Newspapers data visualization to prepare a final…

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SPRING CLEANING AT THE STATE LIBRARY

SPRING CLEANING AT THE STATE LIBRARY

Do you have old or obsolete electronic devices stored somewhere in your home that you haven’t used in a long time? What about a box of mysterious, tangled cords that may or may not connect to things you’ve long since discarded? We do. Libraries, often much like the patrons and communities they serve, also accumulate things like this, and the Washington State Library is no exception. Recently, however, the State Library finally bid farewell to some old stalwarts: our mechanical…

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SEATTLEITES WALK FOR WHITE CANE DAY

SEATTLEITES WALK FOR WHITE CANE DAY

On Saturday, Oct. 15, nearly a hundred people who are blind and visually impaired and their families and friends gathered in Seattle to celebrate White Cane Day with a one-mile walk. The White Cane Day Walk 2022, which began at the south base of the Seattle Space Needle and ended at the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL), was a celebration for people who are blind and visually impaired, many of whom use a “white cane.” White canes not…

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Washington Digital Newspapers Collection Exceeds Half a Million Pages!

Washington Digital Newspapers Collection Exceeds Half a Million Pages!

Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, recently wrapped up several large digitization projects and achieved some significant milestones that expanded its Washington Digital Newspapers (WDN) online collection to over 500,000 newspaper pages. The WDN program selects historic newspapers, prepares them for online searching, and hosts them on the Library’s WDN website as a free public resource. Visitors to the website will find Washington newspapers from the state’s territorial days through the early 2000s,…

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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY — LANGLEY, WASHINGTON, 100 YEARS AGO: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY — LANGLEY, WASHINGTON, 100 YEARS AGO: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

From 1920 to 1922, an all-woman cohort of councilmembers and mayor governed the town of Langley on Whidbey Island, Washington. Langley has the distinction of being the second town in the United States to elect an all-woman administration. Helen Coe served as mayor during this period. In July 1921, she purchased and deeded land to the Ladies’ Civic Improvement Club to erect a community building, which would include a public library, auditorium, and reading rooms. The 100-year-old library, now part…

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DEER IN THE HEADLINES

DEER IN THE HEADLINES

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…

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HARVEST SEASON: 50,000 ADDITIONAL RECORDS SHIPPED TO THE DPLA

HARVEST SEASON: 50,000 ADDITIONAL RECORDS SHIPPED TO THE DPLA

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…

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THE WASHINGTON STATE HERITAGE CENTER TRUST IS NOW THE ALL FOUNDATION OF WASHINGTON

THE WASHINGTON STATE HERITAGE CENTER TRUST IS NOW THE ALL FOUNDATION OF WASHINGTON

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…

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Collage of images from Irwin Nash Migrant Labor Collection. Top row, left to right: Guadalupe Gamboa, left, and Michael Fox clasping hands in a victory pose. Their hands are above a No Trespassing sign on Rogers Walla Walla labor camp. Walla Walla, WA, 1971; Farm workers harvesting hops near Granger, WA in the summer of 1971; Cesar Chavez wearing a checkered shirt with a windbreaker over it and a microphone clipped to his shirt. He is sitting in a cushioned chair for an interview at a TV station. Bottom row, left to right: The exterior of a cafe called the "El Paso Cafe."; Martina Molina Gamboa standing on a porch. Sunnyside, WA, 1971; Someone marching on a sidewalk in front of businesses in Granger, WA. They are carrying a sign that reads "Zapata for mayor".
IRWIN NASH PHOTOGRAPHS OF YAKIMA VALLEY MIGRANT LABOR COLLECTION: DOCUMENTING THE LIVES OF THE LATINX COMMUNITY IN YAKIMA VALLEY

IRWIN NASH PHOTOGRAPHS OF YAKIMA VALLEY MIGRANT LABOR COLLECTION: DOCUMENTING THE LIVES OF THE LATINX COMMUNITY IN YAKIMA VALLEY

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…

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Collage of collection holdings from some participating organizations of Northwest Digital Heritage.
NEW PARTNERSHIP GIVES PACIFIC NORTHWEST DIGITAL COLLECTIONS A WIDER AUDIENCE

NEW PARTNERSHIP GIVES PACIFIC NORTHWEST DIGITAL COLLECTIONS A WIDER AUDIENCE

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…

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