Month: March 2015

The Middletown Historical Society undertook a progressive 21^st century project in 2012, one that is of tremendous value to researchers.   The nonprofit focused on interpreting the history of the major New Castle County town south of the canal has digitized the Middletown Transcript.  This paper has always covered its beat thoroughly, cranking out local content about Odessa, Townsend, Port Penn, Delaware City, and Middletown every week since 1868 as it continues publishing in the local community.   When you read the pages of this weekly, you’re reading hometown news.

The Society contracted with a professional electronic imaging firm and now members are able to view the original products digitally.  They are also able to search the issues from 1868 to the top of the 1990s.  This digital creation which is  text searchable is an outstanding contribution to the study of local history.  Newspaper research, once a time-consuming, hit or miss undertaking has quickly moved from the old crank the microfilm process to the point where our  papers are viewable and searchable in full text.

Most major newspapers have been digitized to some degree, but at the local level in Delaware these efforts are just getting underway.  There are, of course, some exceptions in that some of the national subscription content providers have created images of a few of the early Delaware papers, but not much has been done beyond those early years.

Thanks Middletown Historical Society for being a trailblazer with local hometown papers in Delaware and for aiding researchers and genealogist.   This is very progressive work.

 

Thanks, everyone for liking Delmarva History on FB.  As winter draws to a close, we hit 2,000 likes on this Friday in the middle of March.   It was in the midst of our snowy season, February 4, 2015, when we passed another important milestone, 1,500 likes.

We appreciate your engagement and support as the page shares curated and original heritage-related content about the culture and history of the Delmarva Peninsula and the land around the Delaware and Chesapeake.  As you make this a lively place by commenting and sharing other materials, it makes the effort worthwhile since we all learn through collaboration.

As heritage organizations, informal groups, and individuals embraced Facebook as a public commons, we all have had a platform that allows everyone to share our joy and appreciation for the past, whether it’s a local area or a special topic.  Just look around Delmarva, as an example, for there are so many fine pages creating broader contact for the stories and materials from the past.  (notice the other pages that share their posts with us.)

We all come at this in various ways, levels of involvement and purpose.  For formal groups it’s an efficient way to further the organization’s outreach mission of informing, educating, and promoting the stories of a community, which engage new, broader audiences.  Others create informal communities sharing their interest in covered bridges, railroads, waterways, organizations, and much more.

We’ll keep posting original and curated pieces from the region, and thanks for following the page.  It’s been amazing to see the quick growth as we networked with older, more established formal and informal sites, while also adding our original content, photos, articles, and brief updates.

When we launched Delmarva History on October 24, 2014, we weren’t sure about this platform. But we’d often thought about the best way to share our personal collections and interests. This pubic commons provided the answer as it reaches such a broad audience, is so easy to use, and there is virtually no learning curve.