The Swellesley Report of September 19, 2017 chronicled Wellesley Free Library’s addition of 19 local maps to the Digital Commonwealth – with a little help from the New England Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). The maps of Wellesley and surrounding communities span the years from 1853 to 1999. After NEDCC took high quality photos of the maps, the library went looking for a host who could make the maps “…accessible to the most people…” and chose Digital Commonwealth.
We must be doing something right because the Wellesley Free Library plans to continue digitizing its maps and adding to its collection. Take a look at what they’ve added so far!
Strike up the band, fire the confetti cannon and release the balloons! Digital Commonwealth is celebrating the half million item mark. Thanks, in part, to the large and small collections below, Digital Commonwealth by the end of August was able to offer access to 529, 444 items.
On August 23, you could commemorate the 90th anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution by perusing the 285 additional items added to the Boston Public Library’s Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee Collection.
Or you could remember your summer vacation trips around Massachusetts by comparing your GPS maps to the more than 400 1794 town plans in the Massachusetts Archives’ Town Plan Collection. Wait, school is starting and your brain is working and you know Massachusetts only has 351 cities and towns. What gives? In 1794, Massachusetts still had a province in what is now Maine, so be careful when you look for Falmouth. There are two of them.
Or you could play the “then and now” game with the City of Boston Archives Public Works Department Photographs Collection, one of twenty and including over 1,000 photos by itself. My how you’ve changed, 105 State Street.
So whether you are partial to the early daguerreotypes included in Historic Newton’s collection or the Town of Rockport’s maps, there’s something for everyone in the 85 collections added in August or the over half million total items on Digital Commonwealth. Enjoy!
