Local History Digital Archive

Working Together; Looking at Our Past

Partnering with the Roselle History Museum, the Library has digitized historical artifacts that illustrate the growth and development of Roselle, IL.

The History Museum maintains a large collection of original photographs and documents. Digitizing the collection not only serves to preserve it, but also to organize and index it. In addition, digitizing makes it possible to present the collection on the Internet as a searchable database, accessible to anyone with a computer.

Searching the Database

The Roselle Local History Digital Archive is now available through IDA - the Illinois Digital Archives, along with local and state collections from all over Illinois. IDA collections can be searched as a group or as individual collections.

• To search only items in the Roselle Local History Collection, access the Digital Archive using links on this page, then use the Search bar at the top of the page.
• To browse all of the items in the Roselle Local History Collection by title, access the Digital Archive using links on this page, then click on the 'Browse All' tab at the top of the page.
• To search all of the collections in the Illinois Digital Archives (IDA) at the same time, click the 'Home' tab to go to the IDA home page, then use the 'Search' bar at the top of the page.
• Use the 'Advanced Search' (to the right of the 'Search' button) to limit your search to only words in selected areas of information (title, subject, description, for example) or to search by date (see information about dates below).

About "Date" Statements

Most of the images that were scanned for this project did not include specific date information; many had no date reference at all. The following general rules were used throughout the database:
 

• If no date was available, 1/1/1900 was used (for consistency, so that all of these undated items could be retrieved in one search).
• If a decade was indicated, but no specific year, 1/1/[decade] was used (e.g. 1/1/1910, 1/1/1940).
• If a specific year was given, 1/1/[specified year] was used (e.g. 1/1/1936, 1/1/1949).
• If a specific month and year was given, [month]/1/[year] was used (e.g. 5/1/1958, 10/1/2001).
• If a specific date was given, the specified date was used (e.g. 2/17/1992, 6/30/2003).

Image Quality

The images in this collection were digitized using the "best practices" suggested by the Illinois State Library. The History Museum and the Library each retain high quality archival copies of all of the images presented in this database.

Images were scanned at 600ppi in 48-bit color. Each image file was saved in two formats: for the History Museum's archival copy (and the Library's backup copy), the files were saved in uncompressed TIFF format and stored on ultra-high quality CD-ROMs; for the Internet display copies, the image files were reduced to 15% their original scanned size and saved in JPEG format. The resulting images then were only 5% the file size of the original scans.

Credits

• Former Library Executive Director, Ken Gross, wrote the original grant proposal.
• Roselle History Museum provided the original photographs and historical information.
• Roselle Public Library provided the hardware (Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner) and software (Document Storage System (DSS), from COMvantage Solutions COMvantage Solutions, Prospect Heights, Illinois).
• History Museum staff, Joan Beauprez, Jim Benson, and Joyce Kuhlmann organized and scanned the photographs.
• Library staff, Bonnie Duncan, Julie Bosten, Marilyn Chraca, Lynn Dennis and Ken Gross, indexed the images and uploaded them to the database.
• Web access is provided by The Illinois State Library on the Illinois Digital Archives (IDA)
• Automation Coordinator/Technical Services Department Head, Lynn Dennis, coordinated the project, trained the participants and designed this website.
• Sandra Fritz and Andrew Bullen at the Illinois State Library worked with our data and made it accessible on the Illinois Digital Archives.