Sometimes you have to
dust, just a bit, to rediscover a vase for fresh Trader Joe flowers or a cool
bottle that would be perfect to hold loose pens. In our case you might find some
little used microfiche that would make a fine new-to-you resource. Yes, I said
microfiche as only a geeky genealogist would. Microfiche, as it turns
out, is an excellent resource for long-term preservation of archival materials.
Similar to reels of microfilm it is flat and about 4 x 5, not a reel. We
have several collections on fiche in our collection.
As we were packing, and
then unpacking, our print collection for our new digs at Richland Library. We
came across a collection of SC cemetery surveys and South Carolina Church
surveys. Both collections, created by the WPA in the 1930’s, are
available on microfiche. If you never heard of them don’t feel alone, they get
very little use. They didn’t even have a catalog record so we dusted them off
and added records. Then we explored them a bit and considered how to make them
more accessible.
First, it turns out that
the church inventory is digitized and available through University of South
Carolina. Here is a bit of information about the inventory from the homepage:
“The Inventory of Church
Archives survey sheets are available for forty-two of South Carolina’s
forty-six counties. Surveys for Chester, Edgefield, Fairfield, and Georgetown
are not extant. The questionnaires provided the means by which information was
systematically gathered on African-American and white churches in both rural
and urban areas, including address, date organized, building description,
construction date, and, of primary importance, listings of any known church
records.
An index to churches included in the
Inventory of Church Archives is available in Richard N. Côté’s Local
and Family History in South Carolina: A Bibliography (1981).”
Next, many of the
cemeteries in the WPA cemetery surveys are likely available in other
publications; however, these surveys are special because they were completed in
the 1930’s. Many of the tombstone transcriptions are not available today through
either damage or weather. For example, several WPA transcriptions for Columbia’s
St. Peter’s Cemetery do not exist today. The only indication we have that they
existed is through the WPA cemetery surveys.
Here is description of the
surveys from the South Carolina Department of Archive and History:
“In the late 1930s, the Works Progress
Administration (WPA) recorded names, birth dates, and death dates from
gravestones in some cemeteries across the state. The volumes containing the
transcriptions are at the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South
Carolina. In 1981, these inscriptions were transcribed, organized by last name,
and microfilmed by the South Carolina Historical Society in cooperation with
the South Carolina Genealogical Society.”
Have a look
for yourself! Below are links to our catalog record. Here you will find
the link to the digitized Inventory of Church Archives and a digital list of
cemeteries found in the WPA survey.
Inventory of Church Archives
W.P.A. transcripts of tombstone inscriptions in South
Carolina
The cemetery survey is organized by last
name not by cemetery (although the cemetery is listed on the record). The way the material was filmed it will be
difficult for the computer to read, or OCR, the records so there would be
limited cross-referencing. Would you
still find it valuable as a digitized resource if we digitized the
collection? Let me know. We are considering the possibility of
digitizing the collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment