You may have noticed the new “Archive” option on the menu bar of our home page. Starting last Spring Fort Valley Museum volunteers have been hard at work scanning documents and photos then cataloging them in our museum software. This is a project that will go on for years so new documents and photos will be added regularly. Interested in helping with this project? Send us a message with one of the “Send us feedback” links to inquire.
When you visit the Digital Archive landing page either by clicking the menu link at the top of the home page, or by directly accessing it through fortvalleymuseum.org/archives, you will have several options to look at this content:
Random images will show you pictures we have scanned, usually with captions in a random slideshow. If you click on the picture you will come to the catalog record the picture is attached to and often you will see other related pictures as well.
Archive – you can search for PDF documents related to the keywords you type. Some may have image files (photographs) as well and there is a “Images only” checkbox to only return those items that have images. We don’t recommend checking that box if you want to see documents, however. When you click on one of the results, you can see any PDF’s that are attached and open them.
Photos – you can search for photos related to the keywords you type in. Here we do recommend checking the “images only” option. You can click on the image to enlarge it and view the related catalog record by clicking the “View Catalog Record” link.
People – We have a lot of work to do on this but we have thousands of prior Fort Valley residents listed and we are adding biographical data including images of obituaries, where we can find them. Check on the “Items with Images Only” checkbox just to see those records with images associated including these obituaries. If there is anything you would like to contribute in terms of information or photos, please use the “Send Feedback Link” in the archive record to provide it.
When you click on a search result, you will see a “Send us feedback” link. Use this link to send us corrections, additional information and suggestions related to the image or document. You also have the ability to directly email a link to a friend for that image or document.
Most museums have thousands of documents and photos that are rarely if ever put on display. We hope making our digital archive accessible to the public 24/7/365 will be a valuable and interesting resource for our community. With the “send feedback” capability, we can also use this site to share information on people, documents and pictures to add even more value to make this an even more valuable historical resource. We are just getting started and there is much more to come!
We have watermarked downloaded images to protect the copyrights of our donors. If you would like a copy of an image without the watermark, please make that request with the “Send Feedback” link and tell us what you plan to do with the image.
A new video channel has been created by Lloyd Moss to provide online access to a collection of recorded oral histories. Check it out!