Local History Digital Archive - Working Together; Looking at Our Past
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The Digital Archive is temporarily unavailable online. The photos are available to view on CD-ROM in the Library. We are sorry for the inconvenience and will update as soon as the Digital Archive is online again.
Partnering with the Roselle History Museum, the Library has digitized historical artifacts that illustrate the growth and development of Roselle, IL.
The History Museum maintains a large collection of original photographs and documents. Digitizing the collection not only serves to preserve it, but also to organize and index it. In addition, digitizing makes it possible to present the collection on the Internet as a searchable database, accessible to anyone with a computer and
Searching the Database
- Display All Images: leave all of the search fields at their default and click on the Search button near the bottom of the Search page.
- Keyword Search: type in names, subjects, locations, filenames, or any other term; all the information input with all of the images is indexed and searchable by keyword.
- Specific searches: pull-down menus provide searching for specific business names, family surnames, History Museum folders, and general subjects.
- Date Range Search: specify a range of dates to search between. Use the mm/dd/yyyy date format.
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About "Date of Document" statements
Most of the images that were scanned for this project did not include specific date information; many had no date reference at all. The following general rules were used throughout the database:- If no date was available, use 1/1/1900 (for consistency, so that all of these undated items could be retrieved in one search).
- If a decade was indicated, but no specific year, use 1/1/[decade] (e.g. 1/1/1910, 1/1/1940).
- If a specific year was given, use 1/1/[specified year] (e.g. 1/1/1936, 1/1/1949).
- If a specific month and year was given, use [month]/1/[year] (e.g. 5/1/1958, 10/1/2001).
- If a specific date was given, use the specified date (e.g. 2/17/1992, 6/30/2003).
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Image Quality
The images in this collection were digitized using the "best practices" suggested by the Illinois State Library. The History Museum and the Library each retain high quality archival copies of all of the images presented in this database.
Images were scanned at 600dpi in 48-bit color. Each image file was saved in two formats: for the History Museum's archival copy (and the Library's backup copy), the files were saved in uncompressed TIFF format and stored on ultra-high quality CD-ROMs; for the Internet display copies, the image files were reduced to 15% their original scanned size and saved in JPEG format. The resulting images then were only 5% the file size of the original scans. Thumbnails are created dynamically from these images to be no wider than 150 pixels.
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Credits
- Library Executive Director, Ken Gross, wrote the original grant proposal.
- Roselle History Museum provided the original photographs and historical information.
- Roselle Public Library provided the hardware (Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner) and software (Document Storage System (DSS), from COMvantage SolutionsCOMvantage Solutions, Prospect Heights, Illinois).
- History Museum staff, Joan Beauprez, Jim Benson, and Joyce Kuhlmann organized and scanned the photographs.
- Library staff, Bonnie Duncan, Julie Bosten, Marilyn Chraca, Lynn Dennis and Ken Gross, indexed the images and uploaded them to the database.
- Web access to the SQL database is provided by Computer View, Inc., Arlington Heights, Illinois.
- Automation Coordinator/Technical Services Department Head, Lynn Dennis, coordinated the project, trained the participants and designed this website.
- Tom Glunz, of COMvantage Solutions, designed the Web interface to the database.
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This project was funded by a LIBRARY SERVICES AND TECHNOLOGY ACT (LSTA) GRANT administered and awarded by the Illinois State Library.
