Browse Collections (38 total)
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Snapshot Wichita (on-going)
This is a collection of photographs of contemporary Sedgwick County, Kansas. Although they may be interesting or useful currently, they are primarily a gift from today's MHGS library volunteers to future volunteers who will be asked for photos of houses, buildings, events and activities from the "past." Researchers using these photos will have the advantage of knowing when and where the photos were taken, and by whom, along with a copyright license that expressly allows for non-commercial use (see below.)
Contributors: Julia Langel
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Rex Riley Collection (on-going)
These photographs have been collected by Rex Riley from a variety of sources. They are not a family collection. Where possible, we have grouped photos that appear to belong together, but these are, for the most part, educated guesses.
MHGS does not have the original prints of these photographs.Contributors: Rex Riley
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Woodroof Collection (in progress)
These photographs are part of the research files of Dorothy Woolfolk Woodroof.
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Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum Collection (on-going)
Contributors: Wichita - Sedgwick County Historical Museum
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Faye Wilson Leach Collection (in progress)
These items are from the personal files of Faye Wilson Leach.
The first set of items are from her membership in the social sorority XI Delta Pi. There are photographic slides, membership directories and event programs.
After that, the items are a bit more jumbled. Roughly, there are three kinds of materials:
1) Purely family items, including both printed items, such as letters, and photographs
2) Fairmount United Church of Christ items, including church directories and photographs
3) Wichita items, including materials about businesses and people.
Many of these items are recent, copyrighted, or refer to living people, so, while they are in the digital database, they are not available on the web-based interface. If you find something intriguing in this collection online, there is a very good chance that there are additional materials not online. You may search and view these in our library.Contributors: Megan Fields
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Norman Collection (in progress)
This is a collection of photographs collected by Wanda Nichols Norman. The first 73 items are individual photographs and newspaper clippings. There are also 2 photograph albums, A and B. Each album has been scanned page by page and turned into a PDF file; each photo in each album has also been scanned and entered separately.
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2020 Coronavirus Pandemic
MHGS has started to archive materials related to the coronavirus pandemic in Sedgwick County.
View the items in 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic
Here are my thoughts on how this will work:
Scope
Strictly, ruthlessly focused on Sedgwick County. Even this is probably too big, but we'll see.
Materials
Newspaper -- I'm going to assume that the Wichita Eagle digital archive will be available in the future, and will not attempt to save Eagle articles
Facebook -- I'm only preserving things that relate directly to Sedgwick County (like ad images for special takeout menus). Although it might be fascinating for future researchers, I don't see any realistic way to preserve things like the comments on a post.
Radio and TV -- I don't know what to do about these. In many cases, they are either reporting on the same things the paper is, or the story is based on an underlying source, like a press release, which I have been able to find and archive. I am open to ideas here!
Websites -- This is where I'm getting the bulk of my material so far. Many organizations have created COVID-19 pages, and I will be taking periodic snapshots of these, as well as downloading any relevant supporting documents.
Photographs -- We need more images! I'd like pictures of interesting signs, people, and places that show the impact of the pandemic or the stay-at-home order.
Process
I am generating a list of bookmarked websites as I discover new pages. At least once per week, I return to each bookmarked website to see if anything has changed.
As to the dates on items -- the date on a website item is the date I looked at it, and not necessarily the date it changed. The date on, say, a press release, is the date on the release, not the date I found it. In general, if something has a date, I use it, otherwise, I use the date on which I archived it.
Formats
Webpages -- I am using Chrome's "Print to PDF" to create PDF files from individual web pages. I investigated fancier web archiving techniques, but decided on the fast and simple approach, both to let me work quickly now, and also to simplify future archive maintenance and access. These PDFs don't preserve the exact layout of a website, but they do get all the text and most of the images (those carousel things where several images rotate automatically don't get captured.)
Video -- I've found a little program that enables me to download YouTube and Facebook videos, so I am cautiously beginning to add those. They are real space hogs, so I'm trying to be judicious. The funny one from Cowtown was a no-brainer, of course.
Documents -- So far, all the documents I've found are either PDF or DOCX, so I'm keeping them in their original format. If something odd comes up, I'll try to convert to PDF.
Images -- As with documents, I'm keeping these in their original formats.
Negative Results
I've been collecting both passively, grabbing things as they get mentioned, and actively, searching for Wichita's major employers, retailers, churches, suburbs, etc. If I find something, I add it to the archive. I can't, however, add things to the archive that I don't find. So, here's a list of places I looked, but didn't find anything specific to both Sedgwick County and the Coronavirus. This, of course, doesn't mean they didn't do or publish anything, just that I didn't find it through a public website. Cessna, for example, probably has an employees-only site I couldn't access.
LDS Church
Jehovah's Witness Church
Cessna
Availability
Currently, only the photographs in the archive are publicly available. I don't want there to be any chance that someone doing a Google search for, say, information from the Wichita Public Schools, might accidentally land on one of our archived web pages and miss the latest information on their page. Once the pandemic has passed, we can open the archive for research. -
McCaslin Collection
These photographs come from a family photograph collection donated by Bill McCaslin (1939 - 2020)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/216336971/billy-mccaslin
There are many individual photographs, plus one black paper album. The photos in the album have been scanned twice: -- The entire album has been scanned page by page at a fairly low resolution, and put into a pdf file -- The individual photos have been scanned at our regular higher resolution and entered into the database individually. These photos have an ID number with a "A," the page number and a letter designating it's position on the page (starting with "a" at top left and working toward bottom right.)Contributors: Bill McCaslin
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Otto Collection
A collection of family photographs and photo albums
Contributors: Alberta Davida Otto
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Sara Anne Starry Rogers Collection
A collection of family photographs
Contributors: Donated by Sara Rogers
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