Mid 1950s reef net boat construction at Chuckanut Bay

Washington Rural Heritage recently published two new collections. Lummi Island Heritage and San Juan Island Heritage. These are two unique collections from the Northwest region our State.

The San Juan Island Heritage collection features items from the Jim Crook Collection that tell the story of a respected San Juan Island pioneer. Jim Crook’s family homesteaded English Camp in 1875 when Jim was one year old. Jim lived at English Camp until his death at the age of 93 caring for the land and people on it.

The Lummi Island Heritage collection features items about the reef-net fishing technique that settlers on Lummi Island in the late 1800s adopted. It is a Native American Indian fishing technique that provided not only for personal food but also served as a basis for the development of a processing and canning industry that provided stable employment for Island inhabitants.

More collections are soon to go live so please visit Washington Rural Heritage to see the collections or subscribe to this blog to keep track of the project.

Group of people at Chautauqua, Vashon Island, 1896

Until last week, I’d never heard of Chautauqua. While working on Vashon Island and digitizing historic documents and photographs from the area, I kept coming across this word. It was on the map as a place on the eastern shores of Vashon Island.

Rayna Holtz, librarian at the Vashon Library, introduced me to the term and explained that it was an adult education movement that started on the shore of Chautauqua Lake in New York State back in the late 19th century. Later the Chautauqua became assemblies of people all over the United States, usually in natural and rural settings, where lecturers, entertainers, religious educators and others would perform or speak to people interested in learning about ideas and culture. According to Billie Barb, historian and contributor to the Vashon Loop, Vashon Island hosted the fortieth Chautauquah assembly in the U.S. (The Vashon Loop, July 18, 2008, vol. 5, no. 15).

The assemblies died off in the 1920s but the Chautauqua Institution continued in New York where it thrives today. In fact, the institution has a deep cultural presense and can be found on Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, and Flickr. Browse the University of Washington’s Oliver S. Van Olinda collection for more of Vashon’s Chautauqua photos and be sure to stay tuned for more Van Olinda images in the Vashon Island Heritage collection coming soon to Washington Rural Heritage.

So, now that you have a collection, what are some creative ways to evaluate, use, and grow your collections to better serve your customers/patrons/members?

Join us for the 2008 OCLC Western Digital Forum in Tacoma, WA, August 14-15.

It will
be held at the Hotel Murano and will feature speakers from archives, libraries, and museums. Presentations will "highlight national projects of significance, 21st
Century learners and model practices for digital program assessment." This is part of the third-phase of training for the Washington Rural Heritage project participants.

Washington Rural Heritage will pay for lodging and registration for one person from each library currently participating in the project.  For more details sign on to the WRH wiki and visit the 'training' page or contact Laura Robinson, Washington Rural Heritage Project Manager. 

Dionne Quintuplets advertisement

Whitman County Heritage is the latest collection in Washington Rural Heritage to go live. The Whitman County Heritage collection was created in conjunction with the Whitman County Library and the Washington State Library. It currently features items from the Tekoa
Museum that highlight the history of Whitman County. Included in the collection are photographs from a collection of photo albums, personal histories, objects, and other ephemera.

One of my favorite items in the collection is this ad for Dorsey Chevrolet that features the Dionne quintuplets. A strange example of their exploitation in the 1930s and 40s. In 1936 Quintland apparently “equalled the Niagara Falls as the biggest tourist attraction in Canada,
rivalled in the United States by only Radion City, Gettysburg and Mount
Vernon.”

To celebrate this
new collection, the Whitman County Library and Tekoa museum have come together
to provide an open house event at the Tekoa Museum in Whitman County. The open
house is part of Tekoa’s Slippery Gulch celebration, an annual event
celebrating Tekoa’s rich and proud history.
The event
will begin at 8 a.m. on Saturday,
June 21, with breakfast and followed by a parade, games and
entertainment.

For more information regarding the Whitman County Heritage collection, contact the Whitman County Library. For information about Washington Rural Heritage, contact Laura Robinson at the Washington State Library.

View eligibility guidelines, download application, and get other information.

For more information, contact Laura Robinson, Project Manager – Washington Rural Heritage, 360.570.5568 or Jeff Martin, Grants Program, 360.704.5248.

Home of Jim Crook at British Camp - now San Juan National Park

Last week I was working on a project with Laura Tretter and her crew at the San Juan Island Library.
They are collaborating with San Juan Historical Museum to create a
multimedia collection about Jim Crook (read more about the project here). Mr. Crook was an interesting figure on the Island for many years (1873-1967). He lived out on the site of English Camp (after the Brits were gone of course).

The Jim Crook collection will be the first sub-collection in San Juan Hertiage – part of the Washington Rural Hertiage collections.

We’ll unveil more about Jim Crook when this collection goes live in August.

Excuse our dust, San Juan Historical Museum

I had to laugh at this sign that was hanging outside one of out buildings at the San Juan Historical Museum in Friday Harbor, WA. I laugh because it seems small or rural community has a very dusty historical museum. The stuff is old.

I worked in a museum in the town of Tekoa, WA. The museum is situated behind the Tekoa library branch, part of the Whitman County Library System. The Tekoa museum only opens once a year to the public (though they’ll open by appointment if requested). Talk about dust. The museum is open each year to coincide with Tekoa Slippery Gulch Days.

I guess this sign also applies to our Washington Rural Heritage collection. We have one collection up so far but will be adding more over the coming months. Stay tuned….

Wheat has been a bumper crop in Eastern Washington–especially the last few years. As I’ve traveled, I’ve seen many miles of the golden crop–almost making it seem I’ve been transported to somewhere in the Midwest US. Record prices have made the crop a topic of conversation in many towns like Ritzville, WA. The large grain elevators in Ritzville “link the town to the surrounding wheat fields, and indicate Ritzville remains an important milling and shipping center for dryland wheat.” Why has wheat been such a legacy in this part of the state? There is evidence that a large part of the wheat legacy of Ritzville can be attributed to a certain group of immigrants.

The image to the left was lent to the Ritzville Public Library last summer by the Webb family to be added to the Ritzville Heritage collection.  After scanning it and looking at the image in detail, we realized it was likely a play depicting the immigration of settlers to Ritzville, WA. The poster in the back of the stage shows the North German Lloyd Line–a large transatlantic passenger and shipping line on which many Ritzville immigrants traveled to the United States. This liner’s fleet was known for its speed and boarded many Europeans immigrating to America.

A large number of Ritzville settlers were Russian-Germans (Volga Germans). These settlers were wheat pioneers and made a large contribution to the abundance of the crop in Adams County. They farmed wheat in Russia and successfully planted it in Adams County, later leading to civic leaders in the county claiming it “The Bread Basket of the World.” In letters to the Washington State Library, Herman Felder reported that railroad agents recruited Russian and Volga German settlers to the Eastern Washington, sometimes relocating whole villages, with the promise of cheap transportation and cheap land.

It is time for the 2nd annual OCLC Western CONTENTdm Users Group. I'm on the planning committee and coordinating the presentation by Washington Rural Heritage participants about their collections so I feel I should plug the event.

It is scheduled for June 4-6, 2008, and will
be held at the Claremont Colleges Libraries in Claremont, CA. The CONTENTdm Users Group meeting has been designed for and
by CONTENTdm users in order to address the unique needs of this community. All
CONTENTdm users, licensees and evaluators, and other interested parties, are
invited to attend, so please join your colleagues at this dynamic event. 

CONTENTdm is the collection management system used by the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. It aids in the ability of the participating libraries to build their collections remotely. 

For more information about the OCLC Western CONTENTdm Users Group meeting and to register,
please visit this web site.

PS – If you're from a library participating in Washington Rural Heritage and interested in presenting on your collection at this event, please contact me, Laura Robinson, Washington Rural Heritage Project Manager.

Some good news for project participants – we now have a Washington Rural Heritage wiki!

The wiki is really just a collaborative web space for planning and discussion regarding the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. Libraries and other organizations participating in the Washington Rural Heritage initiative now have a new resource to get information, documentation, training dates, discuss projects with other participants, links to help pages, and more.

Project participants interested in gaining a username and password to the Washington Rural Heritage Wiki may contact Laura Robinson, Washington Rural Heritage Project Manger, 360.570.5568