Pella Community Memory Database

Pella Public Library is pleased to provide you with this free monthly newsletter keeping you informed on the progress being made on the Pella Community Memory Database (PCMD), a new grant-funded project sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). We hope you will find this newsletter informative!

Welcome to this special double-issue of the Pella Community Memory Database newsletter! Because February was a short month, we decided to combine the February and March issues and feature one of our newest major collections, Street Views! Courtesy of the Pella Historical Society and Museums, the Street Views collection features the buildings and locations of Downtown Pella and the surrounding blocks. The new collection includes some special navigation features that allow you to more quickly navigate and focus on certain locations and time periods. In this issue we will go through some of these features and teach you how to use this new and powerful collection of photographs.

When browsing the Street Views collection, you'll notice that in the far left column, there are limiters, similar to our other collections. What's different here is a couple of new features that make it easer to drill-down to the building and location that you're looking for. The first feature is the "Decade" limiter. By clicking on one of the links shown in this image, you can select to browse from all photos taken during a particular decade. This is most helpful for getting an "overview" summary of how Pella looked during a certain time period, although once browsing by decade you can also further refine your search to a specific block or address. The number after the decade indicates how many photographs we have that reference that decade.

In the same manner as the Decade links, you can choose to browse by a specific street block in Pella. Keep in mind that if a shot that a person took standing in a different block includes part of the street block that you selected, it may show up in the results. So, for example, if a person took a photo standing at the intersection of Franklin and Main Streets, the blocks of MAIN ST 0700, MAIN ST 0800, FRANKLIN ST 0600 and FRANKLIN ST 0700 could all result in pulling up that image. The number after the block number indicates how many photographs we have that reference that block. See the screenshot below.

There's a couple of different ways to look up a specific address (such as 818 Main St) in the collection. Obviously, we can't list them along the left-hand side; there's simply too many possibilities. Instead, start by doing a search in the box at the top-right of the page for the address. Sometimes these results will get you what you need. To absolutely refine to a specific address, however, click on a photo that represents the address you want to focus on.

So, for example, if I wanted to focus on the location "816 Main St," I would search for it first, and then click on the photo of "Wormoudt and Kempkes Clothing Store," as I can easily tell it represents the building address for which I am searching. From within that photo's description, I would then click on the address "816 MAIN ST" This makes sure that you're just focusing on that one location. See the screenshot below.

Keep in mind that pictures that include a "row" of buildings, such as a shot looking down the 800 block of Main Street, may also reference your chosen address because the location is included in the shot.

There's lots of different ways to analyze location and building data, and we're looking into some possibilities for mapping and other ways of "interacting" with these digitized photos, rather than just a simple search listing. There's an interesting national project right now, just in the very beginning stages, with the quite lofty goal of adding a "fourth dimension" to a service like Google Maps. So, in addition to being able to navigate left, right, up, down, and in a street view mode, you'll also be able to "slide" through time and view the same section of town at different historical periods. It's a very exciting time and as we have more details, you'll learn about them here. Stay tuned!

We're already in the last year of this grant project, and the initial funding will finish on August 31, 2021. As of right now, we're very close to 2/3 of the way to our goal of scanning and describing 5,500 documents. We've had an amazing 26,210 page visits to the Database since the beginning of the project, and the full-resolution, digitized images make up nearly 2/3 of a Terrabyte (TB, or 1,000 GB) of data.

Which is all a way of saying, whether the development of the project continues after August 31 or not, the initial project has been a success by anyone's standards. The work that's been done will remain online and available indefinitely, and we can be proud that a city like Pella values its history and has so many amazing historical documents. It's a privilege to be able to work with them.

This newsletter is published monthly with funding from an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant.

For more information, please contact:

Chris Brown

Project Director

Pella Public Library

603 Main Street

Pella, IA 50219

641-628-4268

cbrown@cityofpella.com