ARCHIVES RECEIVES NHPRC SCANNING GRANT

The Troup County Historical Society and Archives (TCHS-A) recently learned that the Archives will receive a grant of $75,000 from the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) to digitize 19th century Troup County court and county records. Once digitized, the records will be added to the website of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). This grant is part of a pilot project by NHPRC to fund archival digitization projects. This grant will become official only after the U. S. Congress passes its 2006-2007 spending bills (the federal government is currently operating on contingency spending bills).
These Troup County records were first organized in 1985-86 as part of a grant from NHPRC which was awarded soon after the Archives opened. All of the materials processed in the 1985-86 grant and the current project were saved from the Troup County Courthouse during the devastating November 5, 1936 fire. Two women died in the fire, but still local citizens organized themselves into bucket brigades of sorts and passed historical documents from the burning building to safety. During that 1980s grant, records formerly in boxes marked simply “old cases” and in no order were reorganized and put into chronological order. A detailed finding aid was produced which gives folder level control over the records.
The Digitizing County Records project has several purposes. 1) The records will be of interest to a variety of researchers investigating a broad range of topics, from the settlement of the western frontier (West Georgia in the 1820s), the Civil War and Reconstruction and effects on the home front, immigration, slavery, economic depressions, capital punishment and much more.
—2) Digitizing these records will allow the Troup County Historical Society and Archives to take advantage of modern technology and make an important advance in our ability to serve researchers. The collection dates from 1825 to 1900 and consists primarily of court cases. The 159 boxes in this collection (53 linear feet) are organized chronologically and by type of case. The finding aid transformed an interesting but unusable assortment of old papers into a nicely organized collection of local government records. Having the records digitized and available online will significantly improve access to these records.
—3) Researchers will gain easy online access to records dealing with many different nineteenth century historical topics, ranging from settlement to the Civil War, to the coming of Industry. These researchers include academics, History Day participants, local historians, genealogists, students, and many others. The records will be available to all researchers free of charge. Being able to use the records online will mean that residents who live within a mile or two of the Archives or researchers living across the country or abroad will all be able to look at 19th Century Troup County records with a few clicks of a computer mouse! Having the materials on DLG’s heavily used site will help ensure that the digitized records are easily available to as many people as possible.
Staff at the Troup County Archives, and at the Digital Library of Georgia, including Archives’ Director Kaye L. Minchew and DLG Director Dr. Toby Graham, are excited about joining together on a new project to digitize nineteenth century Troup County government records. The project will be a national model showing how local government records can be digitized and how the Internet can allow county and city governments and small local historical societies to better serve a wide variety of researchers.