From the desk of Evan Robb

Congratulations to the latest group of Washington libraries who will be awarded LSTA grants through the Washington Rural Heritage initiative:

• Ellensburg Public Library will be rounding out its existing Ellensburg Rodeo collection, and building a new collection focusing on the Kittitas Valley’s historical significance to native tribes of the region.
• Lummi Island Library (Whatcom County Library System) will be adding documents to its Reef Net Fishing collection, including oral histories contributed by local fishermen.
• San Juan Island Library will also be drawing upon the resources of its entire community to create a San Juan Island Community Heritage collection.  In the meantime, take a look at San Juan’s Jim Crook Collection.
• Whitman County Library will be partnering with local residents and the St. John Museum and Historical Society to build upon its existing collection of historic photos.

These grants are part of the Washington Rural Heritage 2008/2009 fiscal subgrant cycle that will end August 14, 2009.  Funds were made available by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It is anticipated that a 2009 Washington Rural Heritage grant cycle will be available for project application this spring. Keep an eye on the Washington State Library’s Grants Information page for updates.

For more information, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager – Washington Rural Heritage, 360.704.5228 or Jeff Martin, Grants Program, 360.704.5248.

You may have noticed that browsing the collections of Washington Rural Heritage has gotten easier, and a lot more fun!  We recently unveiled a map on our home page that allows users to browse items according to geographic location.  San Juan, Ritzville, and Columbia County have all added coordinates to many of their items.  Now users can virtually explore an area from the past; and with one click, they can have immediate access to an item’s photo and description.

We hope to get all WRH participants on board with this robust and interactive feature–and all it takes it an address or cross-street.  Contact Evan or Kirsten if you need help getting started.

Harley May makes a sudden exit off Quick Silver, 1964

From the desk of Evan Robb

The Ellensburg Heritage collection recently went live, and just in time for the annual Ellensburg Rodeo (one of America’s top 25 professional rodeos, and a mainstay of cultural life in Kittitas County).  Ellensburg Public Library provided these images from its historic rodeo photograph collection, and described their content with help from members of the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

The collection is comprised of photographs from the 1920s through the 1960s, depicting all aspects of rodeo life: community traditions; dramatic bronc, bull, and trick riding; Yakima Indian involvement in rodeo proceedings; and the daring cowboys and cowgirls who have thrilled local audiences over the years.

Ellensburg’s new collection also includes a number of photos by Devere Helfrich, and R.R. Doubleday — both considered to rank among the very best of early rodeo photographers.

Take a moment to browse around Washington Rural Heritage’s exciting new collection!

Laura digitizing from a ladder at the Kettle Falls library.

I’m writing to bid farewell to all I’ve worked with in the process of setting up the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. It has been a fabulous year and I’m proud of all the work we’ve accomplished. I’m taking on new challenge here at the Washington State Library coordinating the effort to digitize Washington’s newspapers with the National Digital Newspaper Program grant we recently received.

I’m please to welcome two great folks that will be taking over the Washington Rural Heritage Project.

Please welcome Evan Robb the new project manager. He is a recent graduate of the University of Washington Information School, and comes to us from Cedar Mill Community Library (Washington County, OR) where he has been working in adult reference and circulation since 2005.

Also on board is Kirsten Furl as the project technical specialist. Kirsten just finished up her master’s degree in Library Science from the University of North Texas, and has spent the last year working for the State Library on the Emma Smith DeVoe Papers collection in partnership with the Washington Women’s History Consortium.

In the Prius after a late spring snow in Colville, WA - good memories.

I’ve been working with both Kirsten and Evan over the past three weeks and feel confident the project will successfully continue. You may contact Evan or Kirsten with questions regarding Washington Rural Heritage.

I also encourage them each to write and tell you all more about their interests and plans for the initiative.

Thanks again to all who have helped make a successful start to this great initiative. A shout out to the folks at the libraries and museums in Ritzville, Enumclaw, Kettle Falls, Grandview, Whitman County, Ellensburg, and Columbia County, and on the Lopez, Orcas, San Juan, Lummi and Vashon Islands. I’ve made some unforgettable memories. Onward and upward!

We’ve been busy publishing the collections that have been submitted from the 2007-2008 grant awardees.

Lopez Island Heritage - Cora Standley Graham and Frances Guard, dressed as hunters

The Lopez Island Public Library has published the Lopez Island Heritage collection, which features photographs that serve as windows into an earlier time in the Lopez Island farming and fishing community.

The Libraries of Stevens County has published the Stevens County Heritage collection, which contains images from the 1880s to the present that depict the region’s people and communities.

The Columbia County Rural Library District has published the Columbia County Heritage collection which features its first addition: the Early Columbia County School Photographs Collection; 51 original photographs of school houses of the Columbia County region as well as class pictures.

And the Whitman County Library has added two new additions to its Whitman County Heritage collection: the Colfax Postcard Collection of Sandy Jackson and the Photo Collection of Rural Library Service in Whitman County.

We’ll be adding new collections to the site in the coming weeks. To view these and other recently added collections please visit Washington Rural Heritage or subscribe to this blog to keep track of the project.

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.