Digital Past Project a WWII treasure trove

In their recent newsletter, the Arlington Heights Memorial Library included a number of mentions of World War II memorial activities but did not include any mention of the Digital Past Project.

I find this unbelievable. The Digital Past Project was funded by the North Suburban Library Association (no longer active), the library and the Arlington Heights Historical Museum.

For five years ending in 2009, a team of volunteers led by staff donated thousands of hours of time recording, cataloging and uploading data the Digital Past site. There are hundreds of items pertaining to World War II in the collection entitled "Memos of the Traveling Bank" - contents of an enormous scrapbook kept by Lillian Johnson, owner of a tavern in Arlington Heights during the war years.

Other items in the collection include the Civil War diaries of Charles Sigwalt. I did all scanning and photography for the project and donated 1500+ hours.

This collection was in danger of being lost when the state summarily shut down the NSBA, but fortunately, the people at the Illinois Digital Archives in Springfield transferred the data to their servers.

The library board shut down the project in 2009 even though there are enough items in the Historical Archives to have kept the team busy for years to come.

The direct link to the material is www.idaillinois.org. You find "Arlington Heights History," "Arlington Heights Military History" and "Arlington Heights People and Places" listed in the collections.

A number of other suburbs participated in the Digital Past Project. The link through the AHML page is research/databases/Arlington Heights/Arlington Heights History.

Walter B. Vestal

Arlington Heights