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Annual Report
2007
JCHS Mission: To
actively discover, collect, preserve, and promote the heritage |
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Research Center Our Research Center continues to grow as a resource for many visitors and is a beehive of activity. Historic Properties Survey committee members continue to build a valuable database of information about the county's architectural heritage. Staff and volunteers made substantial progress during the year entering data into the museum and archives database. Vicki Davis installed JCHS membership information into the PastPerfect data base, making it possible to track members, donors, membership dues payments and fund raising efforts. The web database with more than 50,000 records, including indexing information on all the artifacts, reference library books and more than 70 percent of the archives and photographs, was made available to the general public in February of 2008. At the same time, there has been substantial progress on digitizing the photograph collection. Work continues on the portraits, our single largest group of photographs. All the of the Fort Worden photos and glass plate negatives have been scanned and indexed. We saw distinguished visitors during the last year including Washington State Representatives Lynn Kessler and Kevin Van De Wege, and county commissioner John Austin. The Research Center’s Archivist, Marge Samuelson, retired in October and JCHS Museum Coordinator, Marsha Moratti, transferred from downtown to take on the position. Marge will be free to do some traveling and will continue to volunteer with the Jefferson County Genealogical Society, our partner in operating the Research Center. Marsha brought her work with publications, exhibit development and the website with her to the Research Center where she’ll be better positioned to integrate online accessibility to the historical society's archives with the website. Late in the year it became apparent that more computer work stations were needed at the Research Center. There were often more volunteers and visitors than available computers. Funding was found through a new county tax for historic projects. Jim Christenson worked with outside consultants, PastPerfect and Dell to understand the hardware and software server needs to accommodate increased research activities. He successfully negotiated the purchase of computers and components for a server for the Research Center, as well as a Mac system to provide graphics and video editing capabilities. Marsha Moratti, Archivist Home Page News & Events Hours & Directions
Jefferson County
Historical Society |
