Library seeks public’s help to grow Civil War archive

SWVAToday.com: Library seeks public’s help to grow Civil War archive
BY DAN KEGLEY
Staff

Tucked away in family Bibles and bank safe boxes across Virginia are letters, papers and manuscripts the Library of Virginia in Richmond is documenting and sharing as previously untold parts of American history.

The library is partnering with the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission and its local committees to reach out to people who own these bits of history to scan and digitize the items into the library’s growing Civil War archive available online.

The library is also taking its scanner on the road, and John Clark, chairman of the sesquicentennial commission’s Smyth County committee, confirmed last week a scanning session is scheduled for Aug. 20 at the H.L Bonham Regional Development and Tourism Center in Chilhowie.

The sesquicentennial commission calls the Civil War 150 Legacy Project collaboration “a groundbreaking Civil War history document preservation project to capture diverse and compelling letters, papers and artifacts from the Civil War era.”
The commission said, “The state invites families to visit Virginia during the 150th
Commemoration, bring family treasures to be scanned and recorded and officially become part of history. The goal of the project is to encourage people to search through personal collections in attics, basements, desk drawers and other places to find documents containing vital information and insight into ancestors who experienced the Civil War in Virginia.

The project sends teams of professional archivists from the Library of Virginia to cities and towns throughout the state to digitally scan documents and images free of charge, so that their content can be preserved long beyond the life of the original. Those owning manuscripts, documents or images originating from 1859-1867 and reflecting social, political, military, business or religious life in Virginia during the Civil War and early Reconstruction are encouraged to bring those items for scanning.”

Richmond-area residents poured into the state library for the scanning, a statewide effort that began in September known as the Civil War 150 Legacy Project.
Library of Virginia archivists Laura Drake Davis and Renee M. Savits are doing the scanning, usually on weekends, with Davis working in the western part of the state and Savits the east.

“It’s amazing what people have. It just astounds me,” Davis said.
They have scanned thousands of documents, all of which will eventually be on display on the websites of the Library of Virginia at http://www.virginiamemory.com/cw150 and the sesquicentennial commission at http://www.VirginiaCivilWar.org/legacy.
“We’re so overwhelmed with materials, it’s taking us a while to get them online,” Savits said.

Information will become available later about scheduling appointments, but the library offers this guideline for estimating the time needed to scan various kinds of documents.

For scanning a photograph, allow five minutes per item; a diary, three hours; for a short letter of one to five pages, 15 minutes; a long letter of six to 10 pages, 45 minutes; a collection of manuscripts,11-25 pages, one hour; a collection of manuscripts, 26-50 pages, two hours; collection of manuscripts of more than greater than 50 pages will need special scheduling.