The Chesaning Area Historical Society and the River Rapids District Library have partnered together to give their patrons access to valuable new tools for historical and geneological research with the installation of a new computer workstation at the library.
The workstation is available for use during regular business hours at the library, which is located at 227 East Broad Street in Chesaning, Michigan.
The historical society has recently begun the process of creating a digital archive of items from its museum collection, including such things as photographs, books, maps, and other historical documents. In addition to helping preserve this often irreplaceable information, we also hope to make it easier for the public to view this material for themselves.
Making this material available for public viewing at the Chesaning Area Historical Museum imposes certain limitations, however, as the museum is only open to the public during limited hours every week because it is being staffed entirely by a small number of truly dedicated volunteers. The River Rapids library, in contrast, has the necessary funding to hire a small number of paid staff members who are able to keep the library open on a regular schedule.
This makes the library an ideal location to host the museum’s digital history collection, in addition to the many other services they provide to the community.
Every file that gets added to the museum’s digital archive will be downloaded and stored on the workstation computer at the library, giving the public full access to high quality, digital copies of all available material. The workstation also features a high quality digital scanner that patrons can use to create digital scans of photographs and other items from their personal collection.
The Chesaing Area Historical Society has also provided the library with funds to give their patrons access to several different commercial services that help users conduct their own research. These include:
Ancestry – Ancestry is the world’s largest geneaology database, with an extensive collection of family trees, census records, and other resources for exploring family history.
Fold3 – Fold3 provides users with access to personnel records from all branches of the United States military.
Newspapers – Newspapers.com features a searchable digital collection of various newspapers from around the world, some dating as far back the 17th century.
The services are all accessible from the research workstation, which also contains a convenient link to the River Rapids District Library’s own digital archive that features a collection of local high school yearbooks, and a nearly complete run of The Chesaning Argus.
The Chesaning Area Historical Society hopes that giving the public the tools to explore the past will help inspire a greater appreciation and interest in the history of our local community, and we wish to thank our members for their generous support of this project.