Sharing our Knowledge
Part 3: The Digital Library
Sharing our Knowledge is a series of articles about the Historian Archives Project and how you can become involved.
The key here, is to “show what we got” on the Internet in a way that people can find us. People looking for specific Strong genealogy related to the first five generations can already find us in Google. But what about the information buried in those filing cabinets, or the updates submitted to us as computer files? There is no indication online – yet – that those things even exist.
My local library has their catalog online. I have to go to the library to pick up the book, but I can see what they have, by searching with my computer. I’d like to do something similar with the Historian Archives.

Recovering from PC/AT and Floppy Disks
I’m not suggesting that we place everything we know online – far from it! I’m suggesting we make a complete inventory of what we have, and place the inventory online. Show what we know! You can well imagine that making that inventory is a large project in itself, going through sixteen file cabinet drawers, file folder by file folder.
The result is that we actually know what we have, and we know what we have available to share. Some information will undoubtedly be private, and we won’t want to advertise to the world at large that we have it. But with nearly everything we’ve been collecting for decades, we do want to tell the world we have it. That’s a large part of why we are here!
A digital catalog is not terribly exciting. It does not provide an interesting answer to “Why would I want to join?” But it’s a necessary and important first step. Let’s look at some more interesting possibilities. Continue reading →