We are delighted that heritage organizations across the world find our tools useful. Along with a few Canadian institutions outside Ontario, we have a group of libraries in Illinois working to build individual and collaborative search portals for their digitized materials.
Way back, even before we were Knowledge Ontario, we got started with our first Illinois members, the Algonquin Area Public Library District and the Wilmette Public Library.
Now we’re up to six contributors, with the addition this month of the Downers Grove Public Library and the Highland Park Public Library. These organizations are working to get their local newspapers digitized and searchable, in the collaborative Illinois Newspapers portal.
Individually, these organizations have made exhibits, research essays, and other collections available:
- Cook Memorial has used our exhibits module to present a digitized version of an essay about growing up in Libertyville in the 1930s and ’40s. They’ve supplemented it with period-appropriate photographs.
- The McHenry Public Library has uploaded telephone directories from 1908 to 1959.
- The Wilmette Public Library has uploaded 20 local maps, hundreds of photographs, and 40 oral-history recordings with transcriptions – including this interview with Regina Fleischer, who tells of her immigration to America after being in a Polish concentration camp in World War II.
- The Downers Grove Public Library has uploaded over 8,000 pages of the Downers Grove Reporter. They’re also building a virtual exhibit exploring historical fashion plates from the newspaper!
- Highland Park Public Library has added more than 11,000 newspaper pages from various titles, spanning from 1883 to 1922:
- The Algonquin Area Public Library District has indexed over 5,500 newspaper items of interest, including lots of materials from the past ten years!
We love the collaborative regional work these libraries are doing. We hope you enjoy exploring these Illinois records!
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