Display of canned salmon at first Clallam County Fair, 1895. North Olympic Heritage Collection.

From the desk of Evan Robb

Congratulations to the latest group of Washington libraries and museums receiving 2013-2014 LSTA grant awards through the Washington Rural Heritage initiative!

• Ellensburg Public Library.
• Orcas Island Public Library, in partnership with the Orcas Island Historical Museum.
• Port Angeles Public Library (North Olympic Library System).
• Sedro-Woolley Public Library, in partnership with the Clear Lake Community Historical Association.
• Sunnyside Library (Yakima Valley Libraries), in partnership with the Sunnyside Historical Society.
• Walla Walla County Rural Library District.
• Whitman County Library, in partnership with the Pine City Historical Society.

These organizations will spend the next year digitizing historically significant materials from their own holdings, the holdings of partnering heritage organizations, and in some cases, privately held collections. Read more about each specific grant project here.

Libraries currently participating in grant-funded digitization projects this year (FY 2012) are busy wrapping up their new collections as of this writing. Look for announcements here as new projects come online.

Funds for Washington Rural Heritage are made available by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. For more information, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager, (360) 704-5228.

We are proud to announce Lincoln County Heritage — a small, yet very cool new digital collection from Washington Rural Heritage — as well as a brand new website for the Davenport Public Library!

The Davenport Library’s new web presence, built on a Drupal content management platform by our own Evelyn Lindberg, was developed as part of the Washington ReadyWeb Project (WaRP). Davenport joins the Reardan Memorial Library, the Ritzville Public Library, and the Denny Ashby Library in Pomeroy who all have a new and powerful, yet easy to use website from the WaRP initiative.

Irrigation ditch at Peach

Lincoln County Heritage, a collaboration between the Lincoln County Historical Museum (LCHM) and the Davenport Public Library, is our latest digital collection which came together through the help of Davenport librarian Katy Pike and LCHM staffer Tannis Jeschke, with imaging assistance from Washington Rural Heritage staff.

Highlights from the collection include:

• Late 19th century images of the U.S. Army at Fort Spokane.

• Early 20th century images of the community of Peach, Washington, along the lower Spokane River — one of many towns in northern Lincoln County submerged by the rising waters of Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, following the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam in the early 1940s.

Foot bridge over the Spokane River narrows

For more information about Washington Rural Heritage, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager: (360)704-5228, [email protected]; or Ross Fuqua, Digital Projects Librarian: (360)570-5587, [email protected].

For more information about Washington WebReady Project (WaRP), please contact Evelyn Lindberg, Project Manager: (360)704-5228, [email protected].

From the Desk of Evan Robb

Throughout 2012 we learned a great deal about how the unique resources in our Washington Rural Heritage collections are impacting end users–and we’re learning directly from the users themselves.  Since enabling the public commenting feature on our digital library software in January, 2012 we’ve received over 100 comments on items in more than 25 digital collections from throughout the state.  Here are a few standouts:

A user named “JRW” commented on this photo depicting logging on Alfred Gardene’s homestead in Everson, Washington:

 “So grateful to have found these photos! We now live on this very property and are in the midst of returning the homestead to historic glory.”

The Everson McBeath Community Library (Whatcom County Library System) has done a particularly good job at mobilizing community members to identify, date, and otherwise enrich records in its Nooksack Valley Heritage collection, which was recently published in late 2012.

A user named Melinda attached this nice note to a record describing the life of Ellensburg’s Thomas S. Kirk:

“We always called him Uncle Tom, he was married to my Grandmother Ida Suver Kirk. He was always so kind to me and created such nice memories as a child for me.”

This photo is one of roughly 1,300 portraits taken by amateur photographer Fred. L. Breckon, former Ellensburg City Engineer. Accompanied by detailed biographical information, this sub-collection is a valuable genealogical resource for Washington’s Kittitas Valley. The entire Fred L. Breckon portrait collection has been digitized by the Ellensburg Public Library and is available through its Ellensburg Heritage Collection.

Another user named Byron recently added biographical information to an image of his uncle, shown here while attending Vashon College:

“Nice photo of my uncle, Chauncey Jones [left]. He went on to study medicine at the University of Chicago, studied humanities at UC Berkeley and practiced medicine and surgery in Everett, WA until his untimely death in 1944 at the age of 64 years. He was the son of A.C. and Mrs A.C. (Alonzo C. and Nettie Bentley) pictured in the photo taken in 1892 of the Vashon College faculty.”

Additional materials documenting Vashon College from 1890 to 1912 (when the original college closed), were digitized in 2008 by staff at the Vashon Library, King County Library System. They can be viewed as part of the larger Vashon Island Heritage Collection.

Finally, we’ve received more than a few corrections and identifications over the last year, including this correction to a striking group portrait photograph from Pullman, WA (two of the individuals had previously been misidentified):

“This photo is actually Clara Hull Newton (back left) and Nick (Earl H.) Newton (front left). They are my Great Grandparents. The Crawfords are identified correctly. –Marti Lothspeich Fulfs”

This photo is one of more than 2,000 documents from over 100 individual families (and counting) digitized by Whitman County Library as part of its Whitman County Heritage Collection.  Whitman County Library’s multi-year, community-based digitization efforts have brought participatory history to every town in the county, and continue to unearth hidden treasures in family collections throughout the greater Palouse region.

Prior to the integration of a public commenting feature in our digital collections, members of the public were forced to contact us by email if they had questions or corrections.  Needless to say, the amount and frequency of such feedback was much lower than it has been since implementing public commenting.  We look forward to more comments in 2013.  More identifications, dates, and stories. Without your participation, we’re simply history!

Sometimes a seemingly insignificant coincidence can turn into a meaningful connection… or at least send you down a rabbit hole of late-night Googling.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting the Davenport, Washington public library for a couple days with Washington Rural Heritage (WRH) Project Manager Evan Robb. We were there helping Davenport librarian Katy Pike develop a small digital collection through a partnership with the Lincoln County Historical Museum.

After two productive days scanning photographs and documents we packed up our gear and were getting ready to leave when Tannis Jeschke of the Lincoln County Museum pulled out one last photo. The image, from the 1910s or 1920s, showed two children posed in a cart being pulled by… a goat. We all laughed at the humorous image, and I lamented the fact that we’d already loaded our scanner and laptops into the car.

Katy Pike took another look at the goat cart photo and said, “Hmm… at home, I have a very similar photo of my grandmother sitting in a goat cart just like this one.” I asked where the photo of her grandmother was taken and she believed it was somewhere in the greater Spokane area. We all agreed this must have been from the same photographer and most likely the same goat and cart. We headed home and forgot about goat carts….. until….

A week later we were helping Susan Johns and Lissa Duvall of Whatcom County Library System finalize their brand new WRH collection, Nooksack Valley Heritage, when we noticed this goat cart image (below), taken in Bellingham in 1928.

Three goat carts within a single week seemed too good to be true… So I starting looking online for more.

As it turns out, the goat cart was a common device for traveling photographers to use for soliciting business to create portrait photography and photo postcards, from the late 19th century through the 1920s.

This kind of image was at one time so prevalent, in fact, the Library of Congress has included Goat carts as a controlled term in their Thesaurus of Graphic Materials – the same controlled vocabulary we use to provide subject access to materials within Washington Rural Heritage Collections. Our cursory research has turned up goat cart images from all across the United States, from New England to the Deep South, and throughout the Midwest and Western States.

This fun discovery has also moved us to try out the social bookmarking tool Pinterest at WSL to “collect” images of goat carts from other digital collections and sources around the Web. Check it out and follow our ‘Goat Carts’ Pinterest board.

Our Internet friends at HistoryPin have also jumped on the goat cart, er, bandwagon this week, too. They’ve started a collection of geo-referenced goat cart images featuring our Nooksack Valley image, as well as one made as far away as Brisbane, Australia! If you have not yet played around with HistoryPin, we encourage you to check out this amazing, crowd-sourced resource.

From the desk of Evan Robb

Gordon and June Thompson in goat-drawn carriage, Everson, Washington, 1928.

A new digital collection from the Whatcom County Library System is providing access to historical materials first gathered more than a decade ago.  From 1995 to 1999, a collaborative, citizen-led effort in Whatcom County sought to document the unique primary sources found in family collections throughout the Nooksack River Valley.  Known as the Whatcom Memories Photograph and Interview Project, and co-sponsored by the Lynden Pioneer Museum and the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, the project solicited materials from private collections, photographed and described them, and returned them to their owners.  Since that time, the materials have only been available to researchers visiting these institutions in person.

For its 2011-2012 Washington Rural Heritage grant project, the Everson McBeath Community Library (a branch of the Whatcom County Library System) digitized more than 500 items from this project.  Focusing on the communities of Everson, Nooksack, Clearbrook, Glen Echo, and Hopewell, the collection includes material from more than 40 Whatcom County families, many of whom were original pioneers and homesteaders in the area.

Collection highlights include:

• Nooksack River flood photos spanning several decades.
• Early homesteads and pioneer family portraits.
• Downtown business districts of Everson and Nooksack, including cannery and dairy industry photos.
• Lumber industry and loggers of the Nooksack Valley.
• A Y.M.C.A. ascent of Mount Baker.

Congratulations to the staff and volunteers at the Everson McBeath Community Library for making this grant project a resounding success.  According to local project manager, Susan Johns: “With the digitization of this collection and online access through the Washington State Library, it is now available to anyone, anywhere. This will be an incredible resource for all present and future generations.”

Y.M.C.A. ascent of Mount Baker, Deming Glacier in background.

The Everson McBeath Community Library joins more than 80 cultural institutions in 30 communities throughout the state that have digitized material with assistance from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. Washington Rural Heritage sub-grants are made possible with Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding provided by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.

For more information about Washington Rural Heritage, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager: (360)704-5228, [email protected].

Asotin County Library has recently added over 100 newly digitized photographs to the Asotin County Heritage collection with the assistance of a grant from the State Library’s Washington Rural Heritage initiative!

Oliver Brodock poses with his cat outside his service garage in the Silcott area of Asotin County, Washington, 1940.

Asotin County Library director Jennifer Ashby and cataloger/metadata specialist Marjean Riggers partnered with local resident Eva Lynn Thomson this year to digitize a portion of Thomson’s family collection, documenting the history of the Wilson Banner Ranch and the Silcott area along the Snake River just west of Clarkston, Washington.

In 2010, the Asotin County Library and the Asotin County Museum joined over 65 cultural institutions throughout the state that have digitized material with grants from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. Grant funds are available  to public and tribal libraries serving populations under 25,000, funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Packing crew at White Brothers & Crum Orchards, 1910.

If you have comments or additional information about any of the items in the Asotin County Heritage collection — or would like to contribute your own material for digitization — please contact the Asotin County Library.

And keep an eye out for a number of new Washington Rural Heritage projects to be published in the coming weeks! Find out more (or subscribe to this blog) right here.

It has already been a busy year for Washington Rural Heritage.

iris0105. Cataloging in progress.

In addition to launching a newly-designed website this spring (with upgrades to our server and content management system), we have improved our long-term digital preservation strategy to better protect our collections for future generations. We have also recently re-opened our metadata to outside harvesters (using best practices established by the Open Archives Initiative, or OAI), and we are currently in the process of contributing over 19,000 item-level records to OCLC’s WorldCat online catalog, enhanching discovery of WRH collections to library patrons across the world.

Congratulations are in order for the latest group of Washington libraries who will receive LSTA grants (FY 2012) through the Washington Rural Heritage initiative!

• Denny Ashby Public Library
• Nisqually Tribal Library
• Port Angeles Public Library, North Olympic Library System
• Ritzville Library District #2
• Roslyn Public Library
• Sedro-Woolley Public Library
• Sno-Isle Libraries

These organizations will spend the next year digitizing historically significant materials from their own holdings, the holdings of partnering heritage institutions, and in some cases, privately held collections. Read more on each project here.

Libraries currently participating in grant-funded digitization projects this year (FY 2011) will wrap up and launch their new collections or sub-collections in the coming weeks, including Asotin County Library, the Connell Branch of Mid-Columbia Libraries, Ellensburg Public Library, Odessa Public Library, North Central Regional Library, Roslyn Public Library, and the Everson Branch of Whatcom County Library System. Look for announcements here as these new projects come online.

Funds for Washington Rural Heritage are made available by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. For more information, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager, (360) 704-5228.

The Odessa Public Library and the Odessa Historisches Museum have continued their partnership this year with a Washington Rural Heritage sub-grant to digitize a wealth of cultural heritage materials, including some cool multimedia. This slideshow interprets the story of the settling of the Odessa area by Germans from Russia, who came to eastern Washington starting in the late 19th century, as well as the difficult yet tenacious history of the Odessa Historical Society and Historisches Museum.

With an interest in photography, film and audio recording, the Historisches Museum’s founder, John E. Gahringer, MD, produced the slideshow in the 1980s from 272 images made on Kodachrome and Ektachrome 35mm slide film, and created an accompanying narrative on audio cassette with a synchronized cue track. The cue track allowed certain slide projectors, like the Telex Caramate 4000 shown in the short video below, to advance through slides automatically.

After a failed attempt to capture the essence of the (malfunctioning) Caramate projector for posterity, Washington State Library staff digitized the slideshow’s components and have reconstructed the presentation in video form. Watch the trailer above for a quick introduction, or see the full length presentation here.

We are very pleased to announce the Asotin County Library and the Asotin County Museum have become the latest contributing institutions to the Washington Rural Hertiage initiative!

C.M. Evans store on Main Street in Clarkston, Washington

With nearly 200 items to date, the Asotin County Heritage collection presents images, maps, records, and artifacts from Clarkston, Asotin, Anatone, Washington, and the surrounding area including Lewiston, Idaho. The collection was made possible by a Washington Rural Heritage grant from the Washington State Library, funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) through the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

According to Jennifer Ashby, Director of the Asotin County Library, “The Rural Heritage project has enabled us to bring together items from private collections as well as the museum and library and to make them available to anyone, anywhere. In addition, it provides a way to preserve these materials for future generations. We will continue to add to the collection as materials become available to us.”

Some collection highlights include:

• Nez Perce tools and beadwork
• Agricultural implements and artifacts
• A collection of regional cattle brands
• Early buildings in Clarkston
• Aerial photographs of Clarkston, Asotin, and the Port of Wilma
• Several local histories on the area
• Historic postcards
• Items regarding the impact of the Lower Granite Dam

Beaver skin hat worn by Jackson Sundown, member of the Nez Perce & a world champion bronc rider, 1916 Pendleton (Oregon) Roundup.

Marjean Riggers, Allisha Parot, and Jennifer Ashby, all of Asotin County Library completed their initial digitization efforts with the assistance of a 2010 Washington Rural Heritage grant from the Washington State Library. Through an additional grant, they will begin digitizing another photograph collection this year loaned to the Library by a local resident which documents the history of the Silcott area and the Wilson Banner Ranch.

The Asotin County Library and the Asotin County Museum join more than 65 cultural institutions throughout the state that have digitized material with assistance from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. These collections include historic photos, texts, objects & artifacts, and audiovisual materials that were, in some cases, previously inaccessible.  To date, Washington Rural Heritage has published 22 collections including more than 10,000 unique items which document local history from every corner of the state.

If you have comments or additional information about any of the items in the Asotin County Heritage Collection, or would like to contribute your own material for digitization, please contact the Asotin County Public Library or Asotin County Museum.

Glass lantern slide advertisement from Sedro-Woolley’s Dream Theatre.

From the desk of Evan Robb

The Sedro-Woolley Public Library and Sedro-Woolley Museum recently completed work on a digital collection celebrating the history of Sedro-Woolley and neighboring communities of the Lower Skagit River Valley. Consisting of more than 300 digitized resources, the Sedro-Woolley Heritage Collection was funded by a Washington Rural Heritage grant from the Washington State Library.

According to Debra Peterson, Director of the Sedro-Woolley Public Library, “This has been such an exciting project.  Many of the photos in this collection have never been seen outside of the Sedro-Woolley Museum; it is such a great way to share these wonderful resources with our community.  Our students do extensive local history projects at several grade levels, and now they have instant access to historic documents that will assist them in their research.”

While most of the collection comes from the holdings of the Sedro-Woolley Museum, some of the material comes from the private collections of Sedro-Woolleyans themselves. For example, these fantastic photos from a community member, which depict the city’s businesses, buildings, community events, and local landmarks throughout the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. When the owner heard about the Library and Museum’s digitization project he enthusiastically offered up his collection for scanning.  “Most of these photos have not been seen by anyone (other than the donor) for years,” said Carolyn Freeman, Director of the Sedr0-Woolley Museum.

Additional collection highlights include:

• Photos depicting the grounds, building, and staff at Northern State Hospital.
• Early images of the downtown Sedro-Woolley business district.
• Logging and lumber industry photos.
• Materials documenting the 1914 robbery of Sedro-Woolley’s First National Bank.
• A collection of glass lantern slides from Sedro-Woolley’s Dream Theatre.
• Early Sedro-Woolley School System photos.

Sedro-Woolley’s City Hall, 1937.

The Sedro-Woolley Public Library and Sedro-Woolley Museum join more than 65 cultural institutions throughout the state that have digitized material with assistance from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. These collections include historic photos, texts, objects & artifacts, and audiovisual materials that were, in some cases, relatively inaccessible.  To date, Washington Rural Heritage has published 21 collections including more than 10,000 unique items which document local history from every corner of the state.