"New" Items March 18

 This past week we numbered 12 "new" items found on the Library Shelves.  These are not published books, so we are re-filing them in Document Boxes , so each has a small "home" for easy retrieval.  "Library Shelves" with 100s of items, is too large a home.

Here is the Airtable link to the 12:

Highlights:

# 1146 Meat Grocer Ross Purrington's ca 1903 Cash Ledger , a hardbound book listing his sales and customers.

#1144  Guest Book for Colrain Historical Society  1972-1991.
Shows that the society was quite active in early years.  Belden Merims hosted in  1987

# 3639-1 & 2 ...  Library ledgers from 1894 and 1900.  These were for the old library, which was in librarian Katherine Cram's house (Joan McQuade 2024) .  The ledgers record which books were borrowed and by whom.

 

 

# 1300  is the first ledger for the Griswold Memorial Library, and starts with its Opening Day, December 12 1908. Katherine Cram was still the librarian.

The library kept separate track of residents and non-resident visitors.

 

#1267  Newspaper Scrapbook 1963-1970.  This ragged old binder is falling apart, and should be scanned.  Why?   Newspaper scrapbooks are often of low value to historians because of their "hit or miss" nature. Compilers often just save a few items that catch their attention, or items on some small subject.  This one is unusual because it is comprehensive - it might be every Colrain article found by the author between 1963 and 1971.  That's a lot of clipping and pasting!

This is a typical page - but there are at least 100 of these, if not more.  Citizens of Colrain today would enjoy thumbing through this scrapbook, but every time it is opened, 10 more pieces of paper fall off.
We hope that a volunteer could help preserve this book by numerbering every page and then photographing it with an Iphone. Then a simple "Contents" introduction could be made saying "1967. page 37,  1968, page 45 etc" and a few other notable pages to make future use easier.
There might be 500 articles here , weddings, births, events, etc etc.

#1163   "1st Apte family scrapbook ".   CHS has 3 similar scrapbooks to this one which came from the Apte family in the 1970s.

This is much smaller than scrapbook 1267, and has a few "big" stories.  As such it might be worth making a complete Contents list.  

For example, a researcher into the old Willis Block would like to use this clipping reporting the demolition of that huge building in 1955.  Lots of history in this building.
Wanted:  Volunteer to number and photograph and index item 1163. Time: at least 3 hours?

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