Photographs, letters, journals, toys and even hand-carved lobster claw pegs were among the items in the collection, she said. Much of it had been kept until recently in Seaside Hall, a local recreational hall built in 1905 for plays and dances, according to the town Web site, www.swansisland.org. The hall was sold last year, and since then many of the historical items had been moved into the library, according to Bailey.

Some artifacts, such as old photo albums and letters, had been moved into the library within the past few weeks, she said.

I don’t know about you, but that gets me a bit concerned. What’s your disaster plan for your library and, especially, your local history archives or even, what’s your disaster plan for your own personal treasure troves? Have you considered digitization? In this case, if they have anything digitized, they at least have most of the content so it’s not a complete and total loss. Maybe it’s time your institution joined Digital Past and made digitization a priority? Think about it and then give me a call and we’ll talk…

• Chicago Botanic Garden - Lenhardt Library
• Morton Arboretum - Sterling Morton Library
• Chicago Zoological Society - Brookfield Zoo
• William Rainey Harper College

We have also seen several institutions that have been around for quite a while renewing their efforts, which is fantastic! There are also several new institutions considering their own digitization projects with Digital Past.

We are also building up (not so slowly) to the 100,000 item mark in Digital Past! As of today, we’re just over 92, 300.

Last week Digital Past was featured in the ALA (American Library Association) e-newsletter as their Digital Library of the Week.

Stay tuned for more Digital Past excitement!

After the initial read-through/click-through training provided on the site and downloading the software, I grabbed my first batch of records. I was trying to get some records from Germany, but that didn’t work so I hit the button that gave me whatever they thought was most important to get indexed at the time. I ended up with the Minnesota census, which was fine, I grew up in a town founded by the Swedish so I can read Johnson and Jorgeson just as well as the next person. I didn’t even get a full page - just 27 lines! However, as it was my first and I was getting used to the handwriting, it did take me more than half an hour, but not more than an hour. I’m sure as I do more I will get used to the handwriting.

The process is very cool though - it highlights each of the fields on the original so you know where you are and what you are entering in your table. It also tries to save your typing as much as possible giving you the option of choosing what you just typed in the field above. For example, if you’re doing a family and the parents were both born in Germany, it auto-selects Germany for you until you tell it something else. Very easy and really rather fun. There’s also the whole “hey, maybe I’ll run across one of MY relatives” treasure-hunt mentality and the feel-good aspect of knowing you’re helping someone else out.

Anyway, give it a try - if you’re anything like me you’ll find it a challenging, fun and rewarding experience!