Thanks to some wonderful volunteers and student workers, we’ve started a project to digitize the VHS tapes in the special collections.
The tapes include everything from old news broadcasts, high school graduations, interviews and more. Check out this one, a library presentation from 1992. See any familiar faces?
If you’re interested in helping with the digitization project, or want to volunteer for other projects in the archives, contact our archivist at archives@galesburglibrary.org.
The first Monday in September in the United States is known as Labor Day. The day, proposed in the 1880s and officially designated a federal holiday in 1894, honors and recognizes the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. In celebration of the day, the library is closed, but we hope you can still enjoy some literature and history on this day. Locally born poet Carl Sandburg was a big supporter of Labor Day, and to honor that today we share a poem from Sandburg:
Here at Galesburg Public Library, we offer a lot more than just books. While you can also checkout things like DVDs, puzzles, cake pans, and disc golf supplies, that’s only the beginning of what we offer. The library is happy to provide many different digital resources for our patrons. Those resources include: ANCESTRY LIBRARY EDITION Discover your family history, start your family tree, or search billions of genealogy records including census data, military records, and birth, death, and marriage records. Only accessible through the library’s database computers or on your own device at the library. CYPRESS RESUME Need help creating a new resume or updating an old one? Cypress Resume is an online resume builder that lets you create professional-quality resumes in three quick and simple steps. DIGITAL IMAGE ARCHIVE The library archives includes more than 12,000 negatives and prints. A selection of those images has been uploaded to the Read more »
Here at the Galesburg Public Library Archives, we are extremely proud of our photo collection. With more than 10,000 scanned images (and thousands waiting to be digitized), we have one of the largest collections in West Central Illinois. You can find a selection of these photos on our Flickr account, where we are constantly adding new photos and working to make every one accessible. Here’s a selection of photos you can find on the page.
Some of the most frequently requested items from the archives come from our collection of Galesburg High School yearbooks. The collection includes every year from 1907-Present, and can be viewed anytime the archivist is present. Unfortunately, I can’t be here all day everyday, and sometimes people have to be turned away from viewing these mementos. However, a new project in the archives will change that.
Beginning with those oldest yearbooks, we are digitizing the tomes to make them available on our website. These can be viewed at any time, from anywhere. Take a trip down memory lane from the comfort of your own home! New editions will be available on a continual basis, with the goal of digitizing all the yearbooks that are out of copyright.
The yearbooks can be found on the How to Use the Archives page. Once opened…
As March comes to a close, we would be remiss to not highlight some notable women in Galesburg’s history to celebrate Women’s History Month. The holiday, established in 1987, seeks to honor women from all walks of life, celebrating their achievements and accomplishments. Galesburg has had its fair share of impressive women, and here we will highlight just a few of the educators, writers, and activists who have called Galesburg home.
Julia Fletcher Carney (1823-1908)
Julia Fletcher Carney was a writer, primary school educator, feminist, Universalist, and Boston-area resident. She achieved world fame for her poem “Little Things,” written in 1845. Born in Lancaster…
From the publisher: One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
“Jeevan was crushed by a sudden certainty that this was it, that this illness Hua was describing was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through…
Winter has officially hit the ‘Burg, with all of us bracing for negative temperatures and potential snowfall. While it’s been a bit since we’ve broken any records for snowfall, I’m sure many of you remember the epic Blizzard of ‘79.
A Galesburg Post article from January 18, 1979 detailed the conditions of the record 26-inch snowfall. “The city was nearly a ghost town Saturday and most stores either didn’t open at all or closed after an hour or so.” Neither the Post or the Register-Mail were able to get papers to residents, which left most Galesburgers turning to the radio for updates on the storm. “The area’s two radio stations seemed to be the only facilities functioning normally and they were of great value in calming the nerves and telling what was and wasn’t going on.”…
This week I’m bringing a little variety to the staff picks section, with five diverse titles showcasing my wide range of tastes. From poetry to drama to true crime, there’s something here for everyone! Visit the library, give us a call or search the catalog to put one of these great books on hold today.
A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER by Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif’s second poetry collection, a follow-up to The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, is “a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew.” Known for both his poetry and his non-fiction writing, Hanif is one of my favorite writers of all time. His talent for pairing difficult, emotional internal struggles with cultural touchstones (like Michael Jordan, Nikola Tesla, and…
From the publisher: As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe — to Germany, Japan, Texas, Ecuador — but it wasn’t until her mother finally walked away that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond “The Family.”
Along the way, she’s loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She’s taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America–relying…