The Fox Valley Memory Project began in 1999, initiated by the Appleton Public Library (APL) and the Outagamie County Historical Society(OCHS). The Project’s mission is to increase local history resources and awareness through collaboration, communication and web publishing.

The Library had already completed several online efforts such as the Post Crescent index and Edna Ferber web pages. The first significant collaborative effort was built around a grant received by OCHS from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, which enabled them to contract for conversion to searchable PDF format of the entire text of one of the most significant historical accounts of the area, The History of Outagamie County, Wisconsin by Thomas Ryan. APL was awarded a grant from the Appleton Library Foundation for a scanning and digitizing workstation. The Library and the Historical Society each assembled a collection of historic photographs from their collections, and these were scanned and stored. The Library also created a keyword searchable database for retrieval of the photos, and added linkages to photos in the index from relevant sections of the Ryan's text.

The Fox Valley Memory Project website is hosted and coordinated by APL. We envision that it will grow as additional projects are completed. APL and OCHS encourage other interested groups to work together and seek ways to raise awareness of the rich local history resources of our area.

For information about how to acquire rights to use photos from the collections, contact the individual or agency listed as owner of the photograph. Photos from the Appleton Public Library collections are not available in hard copies nor are we able to grant rights for further use.

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A collaborative digital library of local history information
16-Jan-2006