FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

            What are you ever going to DO with all those family photos, souvenirs, letters and other things you have stored away? Just about everybody has things they are saving for the eyes of future family members, community historians, or just a vague idea of “posterity.” Maybe it’s a shoe box or cigar box filled with old photos, postcards, letters from great-grandparents, your great-great-grandfather’s diploma, clippings, invoices or legal papers from another century. Perhaps there’s a special drawer where you stash treasured old photos or negatives that are threatening to fade away, a diary with pages crumbling or mementos stuck under plastic pages – secure, yes, but anything but preserved.

            Then there are scrapbooks -- yours, your mother’s your grandmother’s, perhaps even your children’s. They hold information someone wanted to keep, to remember, but they’ve been relegated to a stack of, well, stuff. And how about your own scrapbook, be it the simple kind or a masterwork of decorative arts? Didn’t you have in mind somebody looking at it someday, learning from it, remembering the people in it and the special times? That is the purpose of a scrapbook, isn’t it?

            Hodgenville Main Street/Renaissance has received a grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council for a workshop that will teach you the best way to preserve all these items and more. Louise Jones, Director, Special Collections and Library for the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, will spend a few hours teaching you how to actually take care of these precious, fragile items.

            Jones will give an overview of historical materials: printed materials, manuscripts, photographs, lithographs and engravings, maps, compilations (scrapbooks), audio materials (oral histories and other recordings) and more. She will talk about general care and preservation guidelines regarding access vs. preservation, handling, housing, and duplication (digitization, photocopying myths vs. reality and best practices). There will be hands-on housing demonstrations with book boxes, foldering and interleaving and stabilization.

            Most people have no idea of how to preserve these items, says Jones, and they either leave them alone and hope they’ll just last on their own, or they do things that are very likely to do more harm than good. Technology and knowledge about the best preservation methods is changing all the time, she noted. In addition, those who pre-register will receive preservation starter kits and Jones will demonstrate their use.

            This is a repeat of a workshop held last October. The March 26 workshop will be at the Lincoln Museum Community Room on the square in Hodgenville from 10:00 a.m. to around 2:30 p.m. EST, and includes a light lunch. Thanks to the grant, the cost of the entire event is only $10, but the number of participants is limited and preregistration is required.

            As part of the grant project, a permanent resource file on preservation of materials has been established at the LaRue County Public Library.

            “I am thrilled that we are able to present this unique opportunity,” said Main Street Manager Celia McDonald. “Main Street is very much about preservation of our historic buildings, but we need knowledge of the people who used them and the events that went on to really bring the community’s history to life; a lot of that important information is stashed away in personal, unpreserved collections,” said Celia McDonald, Hodgenville Main Street Manager. “This is also a great opportunity for churches and other organizations to learn how to preserve their historical information.”   

            The workshop is co-sponsored by the LaRue County Genealogy Society, the Lincoln Museum, the LaRue Chamber of Commerce, the Kentucky Historical Society, LaRue Fiscal Court and the LaRue Co. Public Library. It is funded in part by a grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

            To preregister or for more information, contact McDonald at the Hodgenville Main Street office via phone  (270-358-5913), email (mainstreethodgenville@windstream.net), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/HodgenvilleMainStreet), drop by the office within the Chamber of Commerce suite at 60 Lincoln Square, or mail in your check for $10 and your contact information to P.O. Box 176, Hodgenville 42748).