Every township, city, and hamlet has a personality and a story. Local history is a means to define and reach a customer base with appropriate and adequate information expectations and perceptions. The achievement of excellence in the delivery of information products and services requires a commitment to customer service, and customer service is only attainable when the customer is understood.
Bigger is not necessarily better or required. Small, rural libraries possess the greater opportunity to tap into community individuality through personal knowledge of the community and its historical and cultural strivings. The larger metropolitan areas do not have this unique priviledge. Creating and establishing an ongoing community archival project secures a community's culture and identity for generations - serving as a connecting source.
Using the residents of the community itself as historical sources and donators while striving toward retention of the historical quality of the community, and tapping into its native human resources, can easily be established by a volunteer archiving initiative through the library setting. Human history and culture are what extends a library as a traditional champion of information gathering and information access. Community archiving is simply a natural product of the library ideal.
Ground breaking; home-steading; barn raising; water divining; births, deaths, wars, and choices made which altered individual and corporate existence, all constitute the storms, stresses, and yearnings of the human spirit. Library community historical archiving is a means to secure and connect the past with the present - creating a breathable space in between for those who long to know and want to remember.
As the last puzzle piece in Appalachia, Settlement Library community information center's offer a relationship by creating a local, personal historical connection through community participation. Even a small collection serves to establish a unity and camaraderie between neighbors through something very basic which we all share - ancestry and hometown familiarity.
Every community is bursting with human history. A central value of librarianship is the recognition that the past serves as a guide to the future. The library is called upon to not only provide new information, but to also protect the historical record of our communities (Rubin).
After all, libraries serve humanity.
This image of the sturm und drang daylilly can be retrieved at:
http://www.ashwooddaylilies.com/INTRODUCTIONS%201999-04.htm
http://www.ashwooddaylilies.com/INTRODUCTIONS%201999-04.htm
