The Washington State Library’s Rural Heritage Project, begun in 2006, has been helping the states smallest libraries and communities digitize local histories and make them available on the web. Read the details about this great project at the Seattle Times. See an excerpt below:
Seattle Times staff reporter
There are postcards of historic floods, when waves lapped at the front doors of a barbershop and bakery; formal portraits of town residents from more than 100 years ago; photos of a town before irrigation transformed it.
From basements and attics, garage sales and thrift stores come clues to histories of the state’s smallest communities. In years past, those clues may have been lost, or at best, in the possession of one person.
A Westport librarian, who now works for the Washington State Library, had an idea that led to preserving rural communities’ buried treasure in a way it can be shared by all.