First Community Outreach Program Coming in February

February will be an interesting month at BCHS. This time of year is generally quiet for us - a time to plan for the coming year and to catch up on projects that are not yet completed.

One of my goals for this year is to go "on the road" with some of our programming. This means that one or two educational events during the year would be held at other places within Bradford County rather than just at our facility in Towanda. The purpose is to reinforce the fact that we cover all of Bradford County. Aside from that, there are just a lot of great historic places to go in our county.

February marks the first of these events and you will learn more about what is going on starting next week. What I hope you will enjoy though is the opportunity to have a front row seat to what is happening even if you can't physically attend the program.

Over the next month, leading up to the event, you will find video clips and commentary right here on my blog pertaining to the upcoming program topic. If you do live close enough to be able to attend, I hope that this will spark your interest and encourage you to come and participate.

Yes, I am being vague about just what this topic is going to be. Come back Monday for all the information. In the meantime, tell someone about this blog and get them to subscribe. It's quick and easy, and there is no better way to stay up to date with all of the features coming this month. We've had over 700 hits and 80 subscribers added since the blog began just over a month ago.

See you Monday!

The Importance of BCHS in an Electronic Age

Why should I become a member of the Bradford County Historical Society, or any historical society for that matter, if I can use online resources for my research?

It's interesting how this topic has become a part of our daily lives here in the 21st century. The answer to a question like that would have been obvious 10 or 15 years ago. In fact, the question wouldn't have been asked. Online resources were not as plentiful as they are today.

Sometime when boredom strikes, visit The Way Back Machine website and type in "ancestry.com" to see what that now popular site looked like in 1996. The site we all know today wasn't much of anything back then.

Today it's different though and it's not just Ancestry.com that made it that way. Look at Google Book Search for example. Google has digitized thousands of rare books and made them available online free of charge or through limited access. I have used this resource a lot myself recently and have found references to Bradford County in hundreds of books.

Google has a special arrangement with the nations foremost libraries to make this material available. These libraries, however, face the same issues that the Bradford County Historical Society research library faces. There has to be a place where historical records are preserved for future generations. If all material is made available for free online, there is little reason to use research libraries. If no one used research libraries, then the revenue that is used to maintain a safe storage environment for these original records would not exist.

We are committed to improving the options available for records access in our research library, whether for walk-in visitors or researchers across the nation. We are currently discussing the possibilities here at BCHS with a goal of starting to implement some of these improvements before the end of the year. Send an email to bchscurator@epix.net and tell me what improvements you would like to see for researchers.

Your Piece of the Puzzle

This past Christmas I wanted to give something a little out of the ordinary for a gift. A few 1,000 piece puzzles seemed to fit the bill, especially because they are good ways to relax during the holidays.

While participating in the assembly of one of these puzzles, it occured to me how similar they were to the task entrusted to the Bradford County Historical Society.

When the society was founded in 1870, its members had the equivalent of a puzzle box with a few pieces inside. Interpreting the history of a community is like a puzzle box that is blank on the outside. What makes the puzzle a little less challenging is the fact that you can look at the completed picture on the box to use as a guide. When preserving local history, it is not often that you know the final picture from the beginning. Many times you have to collect the puzzle pieces, and at random you will discover that a few of the pieces fit together. You may even discover that the overall puzzle is much larger than you thought.

Two goals of the historical society are preservation and education. This is where the puzzle pieces become important.

BCHS has the job of searching out the puzzle pieces that are scattered everywhere from Main Street in Towanda to the far reaches of the United States. The mystery is that we are not always sure what the pieces look like.

The question is, who has these pieces to Bradford County's historical puzzle? We have often found that most everyone has at least one puzzle piece to offer. Others have more. They are all an important part of creating the final picture. The historical society's mission is to gather these pieces and then fit them together when possible. This is preservation.

As the picture grows, it is then our duty to interpret what we see. This is education.

So what is your piece of the puzzle? Have you added it (whether information, photos, or artifacts) to the society collection? Remember - to see the overall picture of our history, we need your piece of the puzzle.

A version of this article was written by Matt Carl in 2006 and has been adapted for use here.