Digitization - Help us Preserve Nevada County's History
We’d like to ask for your help. The Nevada County Historical Society, and particularly Searls Library, has extensive collections of unique historical documents, photos and maps of our county. These are amazing resources to explore local family histories, research local properties and so much more. But what if a local disaster was to strike, like Paradise, CA, and everything was lost?
We are now an ambitious starting project to digitize our records to help preserve history for future generations. We are at a fortunate starting point. Thanks to decades of pain-staking work by Searls Library volunteers, much has already been indexed. We already have an extensive online index search, however none of our materials, except our photo collection, is available to view online.
Digitization is not just in case of disaster, but also to preserve at-risk items, like aging film and magnetic tape. It can also provide access to fragile original materials, without fear of damaging them. Not to mention helping us to showcase our history to local schools, visitors and further afield. A key benefit though is to make our records searchable and accessible, both online and to library visitors.
We are looking to take advantage of the latest OCR technology (optical character recognition) to turn typed or printed materials into fully searchable online documents. We plan to use AI to transcribe old videos, try to match names to faces on unlabeled photographs and one day transcribe all our handwritten materials. Other exciting ideas include an online map of local photographs to see Grass Valley or Nevada City locations through the ages or to see modern roads and buildings overlaid on old maps.
We are now an ambitious starting project to digitize our records to help preserve history for future generations. We are at a fortunate starting point. Thanks to decades of pain-staking work by Searls Library volunteers, much has already been indexed. We already have an extensive online index search, however none of our materials, except our photo collection, is available to view online.
Digitization is not just in case of disaster, but also to preserve at-risk items, like aging film and magnetic tape. It can also provide access to fragile original materials, without fear of damaging them. Not to mention helping us to showcase our history to local schools, visitors and further afield. A key benefit though is to make our records searchable and accessible, both online and to library visitors.
We are looking to take advantage of the latest OCR technology (optical character recognition) to turn typed or printed materials into fully searchable online documents. We plan to use AI to transcribe old videos, try to match names to faces on unlabeled photographs and one day transcribe all our handwritten materials. Other exciting ideas include an online map of local photographs to see Grass Valley or Nevada City locations through the ages or to see modern roads and buildings overlaid on old maps.
Over 4,000 Nevada County district courtcases dating from 1856.
Hundreds of drawers and shelves filled with documents, maps and other records.
Now we need your help. We are looking to fund these projects. But more importantly, we need volunteers to help scan the materials. We are ready to get folk trained and how to digitize our history like a pro. It’s kinda fun!
To give you a sense for what lies ahead, the Searls Library collections alone includes:
Over 30,000 local photographs, which you can already search online.
Over 900 volumes of property tax assessment books.
About 10,000 maps in 90+ drawers, plus 10,000 digitized county maps.
About 750 assorted volumes of registers and other old records.
Over 4,000 original court case transcripts of testimony and depositions.
About 3,000 books, folders, binders, old and contemporary.
About 50 file drawers of carefully filed company, mine and family archives.
Plus more than 200 drawers and shelves with old newspapers, mine records and much more.
All these are original documents dating back as far as the 1850s. As a rough estimate we have about a million pages to scan. We need to invest in some appropriate scanning equipment and computers to make it all work. We know that professional or institutional scanning equipment runs in the $50,000 to $150,000 range.
We are aiming for a selection of high-end consumer scanners and a PC, with an initial budget of $5,000. These can help us scan about 1,000 pages in an afternoon! In addition, we want to take the best care of our collections and will need professional advice on how to digitize and further preserve fragile original materials. We are now working on a detailed plan of how and in what order we want to start digitizing.
You likely know that the Nevada County Historical Society is 100% volunteer-based with no paid employee or outside funding, except for your generous donations. Up until now we have run the website on a shoestring budget (less than $35 a month). In the last year, a retired software engineer has developed our online membership portal, the Searls index and photo search (each costing thousands of dollars if purchased) at no additional cost to the Society. We know how to make careful use of our precious donations.
So would you be able to help us out?
To give you a sense for what lies ahead, the Searls Library collections alone includes:
All these are original documents dating back as far as the 1850s. As a rough estimate we have about a million pages to scan. We need to invest in some appropriate scanning equipment and computers to make it all work. We know that professional or institutional scanning equipment runs in the $50,000 to $150,000 range.
We are aiming for a selection of high-end consumer scanners and a PC, with an initial budget of $5,000. These can help us scan about 1,000 pages in an afternoon! In addition, we want to take the best care of our collections and will need professional advice on how to digitize and further preserve fragile original materials. We are now working on a detailed plan of how and in what order we want to start digitizing.
You likely know that the Nevada County Historical Society is 100% volunteer-based with no paid employee or outside funding, except for your generous donations. Up until now we have run the website on a shoestring budget (less than $35 a month). In the last year, a retired software engineer has developed our online membership portal, the Searls index and photo search (each costing thousands of dollars if purchased) at no additional cost to the Society. We know how to make careful use of our precious donations.
So would you be able to help us out?