Lynn Ferguson at the Cochrane Historical and Archival Preservation Society (CHAPS) says they had a great year in 2023 and look forward to building on that success, while adding some important research tools in the upcoming year.
Last year CHAPS offered the community three free presentations on local history which were very well attended.
They’re hoping to offer a new three-part series next spring starting in April.
And while they have created important documentation of Cochrane’s early history in two books – Big Hill Country (now out of print) and More Big Hill Country (still in print), neither of those tomes are searchable by an index, making them more difficult to use as research tools compared to modern methods.
So they’re working on digitalization.
“We managed to digitalize the early Cochrane Advocate newspaper because we can then search it by text and phrase and we can preserve its contents,” Ferguson said.
“We're hoping to just continue that work on the digitization grants for our Big Hill Country books.
“The first one is out of print and so by digitalizing, it would allow our membership access to it and so we're just in the process of applying for a grant to see if we can get that done,” Ferguson said.
So once the books are digitalized, along with the already done Advocate, for the first time, researchers (and the public) will then be able to enter a family name and have the databases search for archival material.
Ferguson said they’re always looking for volunteers.
“We're widely appreciative of the community coming out to support an interest in the local history.
“And we'd like to welcome some more people to help us out at the museum and help us do research and displays.”
To volunteer or make a donation go to chapscochrane.com.
