The Kentucky Historical Society is taking its collections to a new venue – the World Wide Web. Now, anyone with access to the Internet can access digital images, sound, video and text from the KHS collections with a click of the mouse.
“This is a huge step forward in the services we offer,” says Mary Winter, director of collections and reference services. “Judging by the inquiries we’ve received, researchers far and wide are clamoring to see more of our collections—and now they can.” The launch coincides with Kentucky Archives Week, which this year celebrates “A Sense of Place.”
Thousands of items representing Kentucky from before statehood to the present are searchable, and images may be downloaded for personal or classroom use. “Teachers turn to us looking for authentic, reliable resources that they and their students can use at school,” Winter notes. “I believe site visitors will also have a lot of fun.” Some of the most common searches like “Frontier & Pioneer Life,” “Civil War,” and “Governors” are accessible from the home page with one click. Users can also select any county of interest to find all holdings related to that county. The “KHS Collections Sampler” offers featured items from across the collections of photos, maps, artifacts, manuscripts, and oral histories and is a good place for new users to start.
Researchers can customize their searches by changing view preferences or sort order, or saving items to favorites for further study. One notable feature is the extensive linking capability. Most of the words in the records are hyperlinked, so searchers can jump from one search topic to something else that piques their interest with a single click.
The Kentucky Historical Society has been collecting, preserving, and sharing information, memories, and materials from Kentucky’s past for more than 100 years. Some notable collections now accessible online include items from the Calk Collection, which contains the journal and items from William Calk’s 1775 journey on the Kentucky frontier; selections from the KHS map collection, which includes more than 2,000 maps documenting Kentucky’s changing landscape from the mid-1700s to the present; and some notable quilts from the KHS quilt collection, which contains approximately 140 quilts dating as far back as the late 1700s. Oral history interviews bring audio and video of remarkable Kentuckians’ recollections, including personal accounts of the civil rights movement, the Bataan Death March, and the Holocaust in World War II. The site will grow as more materials are cataloged and new collections are acquired.
“Of course, this won’t replace seeing the real things on a visit to the Society’s research library or museums at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History, Kentucky Military History Museum, or Old State Capitol,” Winter observes. “But we can’t leave fragile manuscripts, photos, and textiles like quilts and flags on exhibit for long periods, as extended exposure, even under optimum conditions, can damage these precious items. Now, we can leave these collections ‘on display’ indefinitely on the Web—and visitors won’t have to use a drop of gas.”
The KHS Digital Collections database is accessible from the KHS home page at www.history.ky.gov.
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An agency of the Kentucky Commerce Cabinet, the Kentucky Historical Society, since 1836, has provided connections to the past, perspective on the present and inspiration for the future. KHS operates the Old State Capitol, Kentucky Military History Museum and its five-year-old headquarters, the Kentucky History Center. Since 1999, the thirty-million-dollar History Center has welcomed almost one million visitors. For more information about the Kentucky Historical Society and its programs, visit the Web at http://history.ky.gov or call (502) 564-1792.