The Howard County Library is asking for help in compiling its newest collection: items and memories from the system's own history.
The collection, which library officials hope will include old library cards, interviews of older residents sharing library memories, photographs from the past and other miscellaneous library artifacts, will be featured in a display at the new Charles E. Miller Branch and Historical Center in Ellicott City. The new facility is set to open in December on land immediately adjacent to the original Miller branch, the library system's oldest.
With the new branch's focus on community history, which the Howard County Historical Society is helping to gather, the new collection just made sense, library spokeswoman Christie Lassen said.
"There's always been a historical focus around the new branch, even from a design standpoint, so it just seemed like a good time to come out with a history of the system," Lassen said.
The library has been working on gathering items for the past few months, but the collection has been slow to grow, Lassen said.
The hope is that with more awareness of the project, more residents will either offer to be interviewed or dig through old belongings and come up with usable items, she said.
"Obviously people won't want to part with items they own, but if we could just scan it or copy it, we have that capability," Lassen said.
Until more is collected, it will remain unclear exactly what the display will look like, but Lassen said she is sure it will be "something that's going to draw people in and give a visual representation of the evolution of the library over the years."
The intention is for the collection to be an ongoing project that will continue to grow and take form for years to come, she said.
"We'd like this display to not just be static," she said. "Again, it will depend on what we get and how much we get, but it would be nice if we got enough that we could rotate it through" the display.
So far, staff members have collected some "basic equipment sorts of things," like old cassette players and a typewriter, Lassen said. But the gem of the collection so far is an old journal, dating back to the 1940s when the library system was first founded, written by Lenna Baker Burgess, the system's first librarian.
Anyone who has stories to share or items to donate or lend to the library for copying can contact the library at 410-313-7750 or history@hclibrary.org.