The Washington State Library awards Washington Digital Heritage Grants every year to libraries statewide to fund digital projects that preserve and share Washington’s history and culture.

This spring, the 2022-2023 Washington Digital Heritage Grant awardees wrapped up their projects, which include digitizing and providing context for a variety of materials from items documenting the history of Indigenous peoples in Washington and Seattle’s Black community to glass art in the Pacific Northwest, and more.

Read on to learn more about the recently completed projects.

Island County Historical Society

Island County Historical Society digitized collection items and archival materials of Indigenous origin, including basketry, beadwork, photographs, and documents, and posted them online using CatalogIt. Digitizing these objects and materials helped make them accessible to the people to whom they belong: the local tribes and their members. Since completing digitization of the selected items from its Indigenous collections, Island County Historical Society has used the equipment purchased from the grant to continue digitizing materials from its other holdings. It has now added more than 3,000 items to its online collections.

Image

Chief Snakelum kneeling, wearing traditional clothing, circa 1924-1949 (Photo: Island County Historical Society) 

Jefferson County Historical Society

Jefferson County Historical Society digitized its collection’s fragile items, including maps, charts, architectural drawings, and other oversized archival materials. Over the grant period, collections and research staff fine-tuned a process for capturing and stitching together multiple images of items that were too large to fit on a normal scanner. Jefferson County Historical Society digitized approximately 50% of the more than 850 items catalogued as maps or oversized archival materials in its collection, prioritizing items in the public domain. In June, the society hosted an open house to show community members the process staff developed for digitizing its oversized archival collections.

View the online collection here. Watch for Jefferson County Historical Society’s collections to be added later this year to Northwest Digital Heritage, the Digital Public Library of America hub for Washington and Oregon.

Image

Research and Collections Coordinator Reed Barry photographing an oversized blueprint (Photo: Jefferson County Historical Society)

Pilchuck Glass School Library

Pilchuck Glass School Library created an online collection called The Iconic 100, composed of 100 key images, objects, and moments selected and digitized to represent Pilchuck’s first 50 years since its founding in 1971. In addition to the 100 items originally planned for digitization, the Pilchuck Glass School Library was able to photograph the John Reed T-shirt Collection, featuring T-shirts created and collected over Reed’s 30-plus years working at the school.

Image

Ruth Reichl cooks a pancake on hot glass, 1972 (Photo: Pilchuck Glass School)

The Seattle Public Library

The Seattle Public Library digitized materials to add to its Black Culture and History Collection, a digital collection created in 2021 to bring together ephemera, photos, periodicals, and other materials documenting the Black experience in the Seattle area. The newly digitized materials include selections from the Maid Adams Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) Seattle Chapter Collection, the Reverend Samuel McKinney Collection, the Seattle Urban League Materials, the LeEtta Sanders King Collection, and more.

Read more about this project on The Seattle Public Library’s Shelf Talk blog.

Image

CORE "Negro History" Class at Freedom School, 1966 (Photo: The Seattle Public Library)

Washington State University Libraries

Washington State University (WSU) Libraries collaborated with the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Cultural Resources to select materials for digitization and provide tribal knowledge through audio recordings for photographs and documents from Nez Perce Collections at WSU. These include Nez Perce Photographs 1877-1905 and the Lucullus V. McWhorter Collection, which focus on materials related to the 1877 Nez Perce War. Digitized materials were added both to WSU’s digital collections and the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal. Tribal Knowledge (TK) Labels were added to provide guidance from the Nez Perce Tribe on the ethical use of digitized objects. Tribal members and student workers added nimiipuu (Nez Perce) language to descriptions, created lists of common names and terms, and recorded pronunciations to add to the nimiipuumt audio dictionary.

Image

piyopyóot’alikt (Peo Peo Tholekt) on war pony, 1911 (Photo: Washington State University Libraries)

Whitman County Library

Whitman County Library hosted scanning events in Colfax and at other branches throughout the county to encourage the public to share family collections documenting their history in Whitman County and their stories as pioneers, farmers, merchants, and more. Events included time for scanning materials brought in by community members as well as presentations and hands-on demonstrations on using Whitman County’s collections on Washington Rural Heritage.

Image

Albion High School senior class, Albion, Washington, 1924 (Photo: Guy Albion Historical Society & Museum [in partnership with Whitman County Library])

Applications for the next round of Washington Digital Heritage Grants closed at the end of June. We look forward to another year of great work bringing Washington’s diverse history to people throughout the state and beyond.

Through the power of libraries, Washington State Library — a division of the Office of the Secretary of State — connects Washingtonians to their history by supporting quality education, literacy and reading, and lifetime learning. Programs include the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library for people unable to read standard print, and Institutional Library Services in partnership with correctional facilities and adult psychiatric hospitals.