FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Canton, MS – July 18, 2007) – The Madison County Library System has launched an initiative to digitize thousands of photographs and documents from its archives and make them available to the public on CDs which can be used in the libraries or checked out. Many of the photos are from an archive containing the output of Canton Public Library’s 1982 scholar-in-residence, Dr. Michael G. Trend. The scholar-in-residence position was funded by a grant from the Mississippi Committee for the Humanities and focused on the effects and changes which took place in Madison County and how they affected the traditional local culture. Other photos included in the digitization project cover a wide range of Madison County and Canton subjects from the early-mid 1800’s to the present. The paper documents are comprised of various historically significant pamphlets, clippings, accounts, and other interesting miscellany (including the contents of an 1855 time capsule unearthed in the Madison County courthouse in Canton).

The preliminary task of scouring the archives and selecting which items to secure and digitize was conducted by the library system’s director, Sandra Sanders, and the MCLS administrative staff. The digitizing of the selected items has been largely carried out by Charles Bowering (a researcher for The Land Between Two Rivers: A history of Madison County and an assistant to Dr. Trend in 1982) and Presley Posey (author of The Flora Book: A History of the Town of Flora and Southwest Madison County, Mississippi) with aid from the MCLS technical staff. The digitization process makes use of high-end scanning technology and photo editing software to produce high resolution, print-ready images.

Throughout the process a considerable effort has been made to identify and document the people and places in the photos. However, a great many subjects remain unidentified. Proposals to incorporate local community members in this effort include creating an addition to the MCLS webpage to house an easily accessible online subset of the digitized archives and holding informal roundtable-styled discussion sessions (the first of which proved very successful). Anyone with local historical knowledge or archival-quality photos/documents is greatly encouraged to contact the Madison County Library System administrative offices at (601)-859-7733 for more information about how they can help.

Contact:
Jason Moore
Assistant Systems Administrator / Public Information Officer
Madison County Library System
Canton, MS
(601)-859-7733 x108
jmoore@mcls.ms