RESEARCH TIP — 1960 RISING SUN MD CENTENNIAL BOOKLET DIGITIZED — FREE ACCESS PROVIDED BY ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY — For the centennial of the town of Rising Sun, a committee published an informative 96-page booklet in 1960. It is jammed with helpful information about the town, and I pull it from my bookshelf often to look up something.
But now, the Allen County Public Library has digitized this rare title, helping to preserve it and make it available to a vast audience. It’s been out of print for many years and is a hard title to acquire.
The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN., has vast genealogical holdings, one of the world’s largest research collections, and a staff specializing in genealogy. It has been a go-to place for family history researchers for a long time. And the library has kept up with the times by digitizing its vast holdings. It now has nearly 115,000 titles online, the one from Rising Sun being added on Dec. 7, 2021.
Once the library digitizes a title in the stacks, it is uploaded to www.archive.org. The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library providing free access to resources.
Digitization is important for many reasons, one of them being preservation. Paper was never designed to last centuries and deteriorates as the years pass. Plus, creating online, free-access digital copies helps a far-reaching audience.
I’m thankful whenever I find heritage groups and libraries working to preserve print media from the past and make it available to a far larger audience than ever could be done in earlier years.
Click here to go to the Rising Sun Centennial Celebration Booklet from 1960. It is also text-searchable for searching names on the pages.
I have added a link to the Allen County Genealogical Dept. in the remarks section of this post.
https://archive.org/…/risingsuncentenn…/page/n3/mode/2up
