In addition to the regular maintenance of town records, volunteers are working on a number of special projects. A few are highlighted below. If you would like to help with one of these projects, please contact the Archives to learn more.
Special projects
CEMETERY CENSUS
Where are your ancestors buried? Beginning with the largest cemetery in town at Old Main Street, this project will plot grave sites on a survey map and provide on-line access to names and dates of birth and death using cemetery records held at the Archives.
UPDATE: The 1965 census of the Old Main & West Part Cemeteries is now available for downloading and searching in PDF format. Adding an initial census for Elkins and then adding burials from the 1965 to 2010 period are the next items on the project plan. The mapping of sites will follow.
DIGITAL IMAGING
There are thousands of historic photographs held at the Archives. Since the spring of 2008, over 5,000 images have been digitally photographed and tagged. With a new computer installed in 2009, visitors to the Archives can search and view this growing collection.
UPDATE: Over 2,000 additional 35mm slides were digitized in spring 2010. Also, two rolls of microfilm have been digitized. These films contained images of the Rev. Job Seamans's diaries. With microfilm nearly obsolete and with the original diaries too fragile for regular use, we are pleased to be able to access this unique source of New London history.
MAIN STREET WIKI
For longtime residents, a walk down New London's Main Street evokes all sorts of memories. Our Main Street Wiki project invites volunteers and community members to collaborate on the collection and publication of those stories using Internet-based tools. To our knowledge, this technology has not been applied to historical topics at such a local level, so we consider this a pilot program that might ultimately expand to cover the entire town of New London.
Archives volunteers are now seeding the database with information about many of the buildings along Main Street, and then we'll be opening up those entries for community members to edit with their own images, house histories, and recollections. The end result is a highly interactive wiki that will become the repository for much of our local history. We hope you'll join us — either as a project volunteer or as a community contributor.
UPDATE: In June 2010, we established a wiki at NLarchives.wikispaces.com in order to test the concept, recruit volunteers, and learn how this information will be collected, presented, and used. Please check it out and send us your comments.