FOR ANTIGO TIMES

The Langlade County Historical Society Museum, with Healthy Aging in Rural Communities (HeART), is launching a new program that depends on community participation. Photos are an important way for the museum to create and maintain a record of how the area once appeared and how people lived their daily lives. Through the museum, we can share those views.

On the first Monday of each month from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm the museum will be set up in the McGinley Meeting Room of the Antigo Public Library at 617 Clermont Street to scan photographs that people lend us. We hope to build our archive of photos to use in displays and publications. If people bring in a flash drive, they can get digital copies of their photos to share with family and friends. (We’re sorry but our budget does not allow us to provide flash drives.)

We would like to take notes about the photo’s contents such as subject, approximate dates, and any background stories. We would also like participants to sign a statement allowing the museum to use the photographs. If participants wish to place restrictions on how or where the photos are used, we will respect those requests. Street scenes, sporting and social events, workplaces, buildings, schools, rural scenes etc. are all welcome. We can never predict what photos, paired with other materials, can be assembled to form an interesting story.

We can scan prints, negatives, and 35 mm slides. In the future we hope, together with HeART, to prepare “memory packages” around themes. We would then provide them to seniors’ groups as a way of engaging them in social activities.