Avon library helps with genealogy searches
Have you ever wanted to learn more about your family’s past?
Popular genealogy research sites such as ancestry.com, familytreemaker.com and ancestor.com have made searching for ancestors online a fun and easy pastime, but learning about one’s past in the local library’s collection was often cumbersome and time-consuming — until now.
The Avon-Washington Township Public Library recently received a local history digitization grant for more than $17,000 to help area residents with their historical and genealogical research.
The bulk of the grant, which was provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Indiana State Library, pays for two college interns to help scan in the data and digitize it for information seekers to use.
“We had no way to handle these old, fragile documents,” said Lynn Mills, adult reference department manager at the Avon Library. “Now the interns can scan and digitize them, so that they are available on our website.”
The interns are doing the painstaking historical research necessary to verify that information the library has been given by donors is accurate. Then they are doing data entry to update those items online, which Mills said are then available to anyone through the library website, www.avonlibrary.net.
A new optical character recognition scanner and software that also was purchased with the grant will eventually allow data, including old photos, newspapers and high school yearbooks, to be scanned into a computer, where it will be digitized and tagged with a custom label, making it more user-friendly and faster to retrieve. And at a cost of more than $10,000-plus per unit, it’s an expensive undertaking.
The library’s OCR system is still being set up. Here is how it will work: Enter a question dealing with local history into the search bar on the library’s website, for instance, “Who is Dan Jones?” The system will produce the resources related to Dan Jones as well as any local photos and/or personal history memorabilia that library patrons have donated about him.
Currently, the library also is providing a traveling collection of local historical information to aid third-grade history teachers who teach Indiana history in the Avon school district.
“Avon is one of the fastest-growing communities in Indiana, and the history was getting lost because we had a huge number of backlogged photos in our Indiana Room because we didn’t have the staff or modern technology to share it quickly,” Mills said.
“Now people can bring us their personal family history, and we can scan it in to share it with others expeditiously.”
Avon-Washington Township is one of the few area libraries to have the OCR technology.
“We currently use microfilm and microfiche for the historical data found in our Indiana Room,” said Reann Poray, librarian in Plainfield Library’s Indiana Room.
Poray said Plainfield also will continue to use their existing machines until they need to be replaced.
