The Surry Community College Library was awarded a $45,384 grant to be used for a collaborative digital history project called “Families in Community,” which is a continuation of the Surry County “Saving Our Communities” project.
This will be the fourth year of the Surry County Digital Heritage project, which will focus on digitizing historical materials relating to families in Surry County. The materials digitized will be added to the Surry County Digital Heritage website at surrydigitalheritage.org, which currently provides access to more than 11,000 digitized items.
The Surry County Digital Heritage project is supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums.
Surry Community College Library received one of the 47 competitive grants for fiscal year 2021-2022 awarded to North Carolina libraries for this digitization project. The LSTA grant program, administered by the State Library of North Carolina, funds library projects across the state that advance excellence and promote equity by strengthening capacity, expanding access, and community engagement in North Carolina’s libraries. These federal funds are investments that help libraries deliver relevant and up-to-date services for their communities.
The Surry Community College Library is the coordinator for this phase of the digital history project. Other partners in this project will be the Northwestern Regional Library’s Surry County branches, Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, African American Historical and Genealogical Society of Surry County, Surry County Genealogy Association, and the Surry County Historical Society.
The work on this project began July 1 and will run through June 30, 2022. At Surry Community College, the LSTA grant will pay the wages of three part-time scanners who will digitize family history materials in the collection of the Surry Community College Library/Surratt Genealogy Collection.
If you have family photos you would like digitized, the Surry Community College Library will scan and return these items promptly. If you have questions, contact Sebrina Mabe at mabesc@surry.edu or (336) 386-3459 or call the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History at (336) 786-4478.
