This post was contributed by Barry McKnight, current Digital Assistant for the ECHO Project at Winding Rivers Library System and Cassandra Torgerson, who held the position of Digital Assistant at WRLS in 2014. The Winding Rivers Library System, based in La Crosse, wanted to increase access to the unique history materials owned by our system… Read More…
In March 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the first New Deal programs designed to create jobs for Americans during the Great Depression. From 1933-1942, the CCC put nearly three million unemployed young men to work building parks, planting trees, stocking streams and rivers, and other environmental conservation projects. The… Read More…
Six digital collections of documents, photographs and artifacts from the Medical College of Wisconsin can now be discovered through Recollection Wisconsin. The collections, created by the MCW Libraries, trace the development and consolidation of Wisconsin’s first medical schools beginning in the 1890s. Additional digital projects in the works from the MCW Libraries include an oral… Read More…
In the late nineteenth century, one of the most prevalent and eye-catching forms of advertising could fit easily in your pocket: the trade card. Retailers and manufacturers distributed small printed cards, known as trade cards or advertising cards, to shoppers along with packaged goods such as soap and medicines. Printers took advantage of the newly… Read More…
A digital collection of Madison Central High School yearbooks from the Dane County Historical Society has been added to the Recollection Wisconsin syllabus. Madison Central High School was Dane County’s oldest high school, opening as Madison High School in 1853 with 90 students and only one teacher. It became Madison Central High School in 1922… Read More…
A new digital collection has zoomed in from East Troy, providing a history of electric railroads, streetcars and buses in southeastern Wisconsin. The East Troy Electric Railroad dates to 1907 as a branch of the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company (TMER&L Co.). Established in 1896, TMER&L operated the largest electric railway system in Wisconsin…. Read More…
In A Field Guide To Mineral Point (Mineral Point Historical Society, 2012), Nancy Pfotenhauer writes: Mineral Point started as a wild and wooly frontier town. The discovery of lead in 1828 attracted dirt-poor hard-scrabble diggers, educated second sons, land speculators, lawyers, and lawless desperadoes . . . The very first to arrive were Yankees from… Read More…
Menominee County in northeastern Wisconsin has one of the highest per-capita rates of military service in the nation. A new initiative from the College of Menominee Nation’s S. Verna Fowler Academic Library and Menominee Public Library pays tribute to the many veterans in the community. Bryan Stevenson, Head of Special Collections at the College, invited… Read More…
Twenty-two yearbooks and other publications from schools in the village of Scandinavia in Waupaca County, Wisconsin are now available online from the Scandinavia Public Library. Although no schools remain in the community, from 1877-1932 the village was home to Scandinavia Academy (renamed Central Wisconsin College in 1920), a junior college supported by the Norwegian Lutheran… Read More…
Over 11,000 photographs illustrating the history of Marquette University in Milwaukee are now available online thanks to the University Archives’ ongoing scan-on-demand program. For the past six years, the Archives has digitized materials in response to research requests from students, faculty, alumni and the general public. Some of the most heavily-requested subjects include athletics, campus… Read More…
