Do you have analog photos, letters, and documents that you wish were digital? We’re here to help! Now that libraries and archives are able to put materials online and make them easily available to the world, we are working to create a more complete online archive that documents the history of Northwest Ohio. While we have been digitizing our own materials, we need your help to create a more complete historical picture. Bring your photos, letters, and documents, and Preserve Your Personal Story here at TLCPL!

For our very first Preserve Your Personal Story, we will be focusing on materials from and about veterans. We are particularly interested in capturing the experience of veterans from Northwest Ohio, but this event is open to all.

Preserve Your Personal Story: Veterans will take place at Main Library on Saturday, November 5, 2016 from 12-4 p.m. Digitized materials will be made accessible via the Digital Collections of Northwest Ohio, our site that hosts primary resource content from and related to Northwest Ohio. To check out some materials recently lent to us by veteran John Gallagher, visit Ohio Memory.

Check out these other great online collections related to veterans:

Little Stories of the Great War: Ohioians in World War I

Georgia's Home Front: World War II

Torn in Two: Mapping the American Civil War

If you have materials that are relevant to this theme, and wish to make them available, wonderful! If you do not wish to have your materials added to the Digital Collections of Northwest Ohio, that’s perfectly fine too. We will be providing copies of all digitized materials on flash drives for all attendees. We ask that customers limit their digitization requests to ten pages or photos. We are primarily interested in 2D materials, such as letters, pictures, postcards, documents, etc. Materials up to 8.5 x 11 inches are welcome. If you have materials larger than 8.5 x 11 inches that you are interested in digitizing or would like to digitize materials but cannot attend the event, please contact us (contact information below).

Don’t have materials you want to digitize? This event may still be for you. We will be handing out brochures about how to preserve your digital files as well. While digitizing materials can help to preserve content, especially physical materials that are deteriorating, digital files require special attention in order to make sure that they are accessible for future generations. Topics covered in the brochure include file identification, organization, storage and backup.

We will be doing more Preserve Your Personal Story events in the future. If you have suggestions regarding topics or themes that you would like to see covered, please email us. The program is first come first serve, so be sure to arrive early.

Contact information:
Local History & Genealogy Department (Main Library, third floor)
419.259.5233
digitization@toledolibrary.org