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Date: 5/23/2022
LUDLOW - As the Hubbard Memorial Library is cataloging photos and documents of Ludlow’s history, the library is looking for help in identifying people in their photo collection.
“What we’re doing is we’re digitizing material from our historical collections and a fair amount of the material, all it has is a number from the picture. If there’s a picture of people, a lot of times there just is not enough information,” Library Director Patrick McGowan said.
McGowan said the library is specifically looking to identify people in photos from as far back as 100 years ago.
“We acquired a whole bunch of photos, some of the materials belongs to the Historical Commission, so we rehoused some of the materials at the library. What we’re doing is we’re taking all the photos and transferring how they’re stored,” he said.
To preserve the older photos, McGowan said part of the job is taking them out of their paper folders and putting them into acid-free folders, so they are preserved better.
McGowan said the library is trying to put together a spreadsheet with information from the photos so they are easily identifiable.
“We create a spreadsheet with all kinds of meta-data, which is data about the image. It basically contains the item ID so we can link the names and for the biographical and descriptive information we would add the names there for the various photographs,” he said.
Along with the names, McGowan said the library is also keeping track of where the photos came from, dates and more. He added that once the information is gathered, it can be used as finding aids for residents looking for information.
While many of the images are housed on the state’s Digital Commonwealth website, McGowan said he hopes to see some of those photos and historical documents on the library’s website.
“At some point we are going to get as much as we can up on that site, but we are also looking to re-do our own library website and host it locally because we have some other things where we can create flip books and other e-books,” he said.
Once the library finishes narrowing down the people in the photos, McGowan said he hopes to also identify more information about the locations in some of the library’s other photos.
“It compliments people doing genealogical research. We have ancestry.com so you can use that database and if you have a particular person in mind in a photo, we can scan the photo for you and give you a copy before you use ancestry to look up further information,” he said.
McGowan said the historical photos and research also goes hand-in-hand with the town preparing to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2024. Some of these photos will be on display at 250th anniversary town hall events, with the next one taking place on June 13 at Ludlow High School.
Anyone interested in helping identify the people in the photos in the Hubbard Library’s collection can reach out to McGowan at pmcgowan@cwmars.org.