Fine Print - Bibliotech Topics

Biblio-Tech Topics
Local History Online - The Fox Valley Memory Project

Barbara Kelly, Assistant Library Director

The Fox Valley Memory Project began in 1999, initiated by the Appleton Public Library (APL) and the Outagamie County Historical Society(OCHS). The Project’s mission was and still is to increase local history resources and awareness through collaboration, communication and web publishing.

The Appleton Public Library has long been involved in preserving the record of the local history of the Fox Valley. We also have an interest in making access to that historical record widely accessible to people from the local community as well as people from all over the country and the world. These two interests have sometimes been in conflict because providing access can interfere with preservation, and proper preservation can interfere with access. Many hands paging through a book can do permanent damage. Photocopying using harsh lights can cause damage as well. Some older paper books and maps are so fragile that we were no longer able to have them out on shelves, and we had of necessity become quite protective of them.

The Library had already completed several online efforts such as the Post Crescent Index (http://www.apl.org/pcindex/ ) and Edna Ferber (http://www.apl.org/history/ferber/) web pages. The first significant collaborative effort of the two organizations was built around a grant received by OCHS from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, which enabled them to contract for conversion to searchable PDF format of the entire text of one of the most significant historical accounts of the area, The History of Outagamie County, Wisconsin by Thomas Ryan. APL was awarded a grant from the Appleton Library Foundation for a scanning and digitizing workstation. The Library and the Historical Society each assembled a collection of historic photographs from their collections, and these were scanned and stored. The Library also created a keyword searchable database for retrieval of the photos, and added linkages to photos in the index from relevant sections of the Ryan's text.
The project has grown to include thousands of scanned photos. The Library has been awarded two grants from the federally funded, state administered Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant program for digitization of additional books, including plat books, atlases, and another major historical work – The Record of the Pioneers of Outagamie County, WI. Recently, the historical archives of the Appleton League of Women Voters has been added to the site, including minutes, Bulletins, local studies and issue papers back to the 1940’s.

The site also includes a page of links to resources hosted in other locations, but of interest to local historians. There are over 60 links, including pointers to subscription databases that library cardholders can obtain free access to. Access to all of these materials can be provided without jeopardizing preservation of the materials in any way. We can put the old fragile materials away in safe storage and still allow school children to use the information contained in them to write reports and learn about our heritage. Genealogists from all over the world can work conveniently from their home computers, and request copies of needed materials via email when necessary.

The Fox Valley Memory Project (http://www.foxvalleymemory.org/) website is hosted, managed and coordinated by APL. We envision that it will grow as additional projects are completed. APL and OCHS encourage other interested groups to work together and seek ways to raise awareness of the rich local history resources of our area.