NEWS RELEASE

Press Contact: Mathieu Deschaine, Digital Collections Manager [email protected]

Oregon Historical Society joins Digital Public Library of America as inaugural member of Northwest Digital Heritage Hub

Portland, OR — May 25, 2021 — The Historical Society (OHS) is pleased to announce its participation in Northwest Digital Heritage (NWDH, northwestdigitalheritage.org). This collaborative effort by the , , and the Oregon Heritage Commission provides free, public access to materials in Oregon and Washington libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA, dp.la) — a discovery portal for millions of cultural heritage items from across the United States.

“Participating in the Northwest Digital Heritage hub of the Digital Public Library of America means that thousands of the unique historical items OHS cares for — including important documents and brilliant photographs of Oregon places and people — will now be even more discoverable by Oregonians and students, teachers, and researchers across the globe,” said OHS Research Library Director Shawna Gandy.

OHS has made an initial contribution of over 9,000 records from OHS Digital Collections (OHSDC, digitalcollections.ohs.org) to the DPLA through the NWDH service hub, thereby building on work to expand access to its collections and encourage their use for teaching, learning, and research. OHDC currently shares over 34,000 items, including photographs, manuscripts, oral histories, and moving images. As OHS staff-members make more items available on both OHSDC and the DPLA, they continue OHS’s mission to advance knowledge and inspire curiosity about all the people, places, and events that have shaped Oregon.

OHS records on DPLA may be viewed here. The entire inaugural set of more than 80,000 records from the NWDH service hub is viewable here, and comes primarily from the digital collections of this core group of institutions:

• Densho • • Oregon Historical Society • Seattle Public Library • Spokane Public Library • State Library of Oregon • Washington Rural Heritage / Washington State Library • Yakima Valley Libraries

The May 25, 2021, launch of Northwest Digital Heritage is the culmination of years of work and careful coordination. OHS is proud to join as an inaugural partner.

About the Oregon Historical Society

For more than a century, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of artifacts, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms & website (www.ohs.org), educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.