An 1897 photo of Pine Grove School, from the Early Columbia County School Photographs collection.
OLYMPIA: Community libraries across Washington are receiving state grants to help them preserve and celebrate their rural heritage and history.
The Washington State Library’s Rural Heritage Project is providing grants to the following libraries or library districts for their projects:
Cathlamet Public Library: $5,750. The project title is Saving & Sharing Wahkiakum’s Past for the Future. The library will partner with the Wahkiakum County Historical Society to digitize photos representative of the county’s history. Topics include fishing, river life along the Lower Columbia, forestry, Native Americans of the region, and pioneers.
Columbia County Rural Library District (based in Dayton): $6,144. The project title is Cemeteries throughout Columbia County. These two are some of the many funded projects.
The grants, which can be spent starting in mid-August, will be used to expand online digital collections being developed by the library districts. The grants are funded by the Library Services and Technology Act through the Federal Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS).
The grants are part of the Washington Rural Heritage grant cycle that will end August 13, 2010. The Cathlamet, Denny Ashby, Fort Vancouver, Mid-Columbia and Pend Oreille libraries are first-time participants and awardees in the project. The Columbia County, Ellensburg and Whitman County libraries received similar grant awards in previous years.
The Washington Rural Heritage (WRH) program is an online repository of special collections in and around small, rural communities throughout the state. It features items important to Washington’s history, culture, places and people.
The physical collections are housed locally by their owners, while the digital collections are hosted by the State Library. The research, digitization and cataloging of items is a collaborative effort between local staff and volunteers at local libraries and the Washington State Library staff.
So far, Washington Rural Heritage has published 12 collections, with an additional collection being catalogued. Several new subcollections will be published later this summer. To date, almost 30 libraries and partnering heritage institutions throughout the state have contributed to the project. Robb said there are more than 5,000 items in the rural heritage collection, although not all are published online yet.
For more information about the grants or the Rural Heritage Project, contact Robb at (360) 704-5228 or Jeff Martin, State Library grants manager, at (360) 704-5248. Visit the Washington Rural Heritage program online at http://www.washingtonruralheritage.org/.
