Press Release from Price City Library
The libraries of the intermountain west are teaming up to provide free scanning of historic documents and images from the time of the westward migrations. Anyone with old family diaries, letters or other documents relating to pioneer life is invited to bring them to their local library on one of the days scheduled for scanning. The Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) has organized professional digitization teams who will travel throughout the area, from Nevada through Utah and into Idaho. These teams will look at the documents and photographs and recommend which items to scan.
The scanned items will be available through the local library, the Mountain West Digital Library and through the new Digital Public Library of America (www.dp.la). Communications manager at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, Roger Layton explains that this is a great opportunity. “So many families have diaries or old family documents and with each generation they become harder to keep track of,” Layton stated. “With the creation of these new digital libraries, a family can have their documents scanned and then everyone, siblings, cousins and distant relatives can have access to the documents through the Internet.”
Old travel records, ledgers from early business, travel journals, drawings, sketches, photographs of family, buildings, landmarks or all of these items will be interesting to historians and researchers.
A scanning event will be held at the Price City Library on Thursday, Sept. 26 from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Anyone interested in participating in the event may walk in or set up an appointment to avoid a long wait. The team will look at the documents and scan the material that fit within the time frame.
After the documents have been scanned, owners can take them home for safekeeping. An online link will allow family and friends to view the material. Participants should be aware that it will take a few weeks for all of the scans to be processed and uploaded into the library systems.
For further information or to schedule an appointment, contact Norma Procarione at the Price City Library (435) 636-3188 or Marisa Snyder at (801) 422-2843.
The Pioneers in Your Attic program will run through October. Additional information is available on the project website at https://mwdl.org/portals/pioneers.php.