This week I visited the Ontario City Library, one of our
project partners, to pick up some new materials for our CLIR CCEPS fellows to
scan. This field trip offered a nice break from document scanning. We are
working with the Ontario City Library, as well as several other libraries, to
digitize a massive number of documents pertaining to water resources in
California. The Ontario City Library’s collection, along with their expertise,
is vital for the project to succeed, and it was great to get to see the library
in person.
The Ontario City Library also has special collections, what
they call the Model Colony Collections. This odd name is actually a reference
to Ontario’s history as the city was often used as a model for emerging
settlements in the surrounding area. The Model Colony Collection is dedicated
to preserving and presenting the history of Ontario using books, photographs,
maps, and other archival material. While visiting the library I was able to
spend time with the librarians in the Model Colony History Room and see the impressive
scope of their collection.
As the librarian at the Ontario City Library reviewed with
us the different materials we were picking up this week, I was struck by the
breadth of information that our project is going to make readily available
online for researchers. Within these boxes, there were water and
land company stock certificates, water well data, letters, land grant deeds,
water pump reports, and more. All these discrete documents are puzzle pieces to
understanding historic water use in California, pieces that would be missing
from our project without the hard work and dedication of the Ontario City
Library.
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}