Pocahontas County History Preservation, Digitization, Community

About the "Pocahontas County Hisory" Web Site

Our Historic Preservation Project aims to promote and document Pocahontas County's local history by identifying and conserving significant papers, artifacts, and places, digitizing these materials, and making them available to a virtual community of students, researchers, and historians. This Web site will present materials as they are digitized. Rather than reading a report on a finished project, like a static history book, you will be able to watch this project as it grows and changes, and before long, you should be able to add your comments, insights, and information.

Our mandate is the preservation, digitization, and sharing of information and tangible materials. These are our working definitions.

• Preservation: Identifying, stabilizing, curating and storing papers, pictures, records, and artifacts. Unless a special effort is made to document and preserve memories, artifacts, and records, local history can disappear quickly. Pocahontas County is rich in people who care about its history, and this project will provide resources to help them preserve it.
• Digitization: Capturing writings, photographs, interviews, artifacts, buildings and archaeological sites as digital images, sound files, and text. As we digitize local history materials, we will make them freely available on the World Wide Web, so that students, genealogists, and historians anywhere in the world can access and work with them.
• Community Building: People here work to preserve Pocahontas County History in many ways. Historic buildings are maintained and renovated, heritage fairs showcase local history, cemeteries are cared for and documented, and local genealogists research ancestors for far-away seekers. This web site will serve these workers (and many others) as they exchange information and will showcase their hard work.