Creating a sense of identity through shared history

View Iowa Libraries “Through the Years” on Iowa Heritage Digital Collections 

"Take a trip down memory lane and see what Iowa libraries looked like in decades gone by in a new collection from the State Library’s Iowa Heritage Digital Collections. In celebration of National Library Week, the State Library is officially presenting Iowa Libraries Through the Years, an assortment of photographs of Iowa libraries from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s..."

The Illinois State Library has its own digital archives directory (the subject of a future post, I'm sure) for projects in libraries around the state, but only some of those libraries have collections about their own histories. What Iowa is doing is something more narrowly focused, its aim -- I think -- being what I put in the subject line above. Historical photos, besides their nostalgic charm, tend to have details in common with our own histories. I've never been to the Allison Public Library in Iowa, nor even heard of it before, but I can look at this and think, gee, I remember being in libraries like that before...