WINDHAM – Aiming to make its collection more accessible to a new generation of history buffs, the Windham Historical Society has begun a two-year effort to digitize the collection’s many thousands of items.

The project, made possible by a $1,388 grant from the Maine State Archives, uses a special archiving software for the gargantuan task and is being performed by the society’s museum curator, Penny Loura, as well as the society’s secretary, Kay Soldier, who is a columnist for the Lakes Region Weekly.

Loura, armed with an Apple iPhone and a laptop computer, is taking photos of each item in the collection and inputting information as the PastPerfect software directs. Loura says the software allows each item to be uploaded to the society’s website, as well.

Soldier’s role, as longtime Windham history buff with a deep knowledge of the collection, is to help Loura with what both say will be a lengthy process with more than 7,000 items needing to be cataloged digitally – “everything from a hearse to tinderbox,” Soldier said.

“We’re cataloging all things that have been donated to us over the years – books, papers, tools, genealogy, lots of things. Oh my God, there are so many things. Attics full of stuff,” said Loura, a registered nurse at Maine Medical Center who is aiming to spend a day each week cataloging.

The bulk of the collection is stored in three main buildings: the society’s headquarters building on Windham Center Road, which once served as the town hall; the Windham Center Circulating Library, located next to the headquarters building; and the Old Grocery at the nearby intersection of Route 202 and Windham Center Road.

However, with only 3-by-5-inch index cards – some decades old and with vague descriptive details – society members have trouble pinpointing the location of items, especially if a resident comes in wanting to see something an ancestor donated.

“When we go to look for things, we’re not going to find them right now because nobody really knows where they are. And that will be fixed by doing it this way. So it’s not just digitizing the collection, it’s organizing it, as well,” Loura said.

While Soldier and Loura are excited to get a better grasp on the collection, public access is a motivator, too. The public will have better access both in person and online, which is where the PastPerfect software truly shines, Soldier said.

“If they want to come in and see if their grandfather’s pitchfork is still here from 1920, we’ll be able to find it, since the software requires a location,” Soldier said, “But if they want to look something up at home on their computer, they can do that, as well. They can go on our website and see pictures of the school they went to, or a picture of their grandmother, and there will be descriptions of each of them.”

Soldier, who said she uses the Internet extensively to research history, says many historical societies throughout Maine are beginning to catalog their collection online and that Windham is aiming to remain relevant to a populace that increasingly turns to the Internet for information.

“If we’re going to go into the next century, we definitely have to do this,” Soldier said. “The biggest reason is access, so people will have increased access to information about the town or the history of the area, especially school children. They go to school with laptops now so it just makes it much more useful and easily accessible and makes history in their language. I always say it’s a graphic world. This is how we’re going to get them interested in history.”

And the service will be a boon to professional historians and authors, not just laymen. Soldier said people “can search by category, type in a person’s name, just like anything on the Internet. For example, you go to Google and type in ‘Windham washtubs’ and the next thing you know you have the historical society’s website. It’s so easy. You can’t imagine how a site like this is invaluable for getting research about a certain period of time in history.”

So far, the women have cataloged about a dozen items, so they have a long way to go before the collection can be viewed online. However, the exercise is invaluable since the software demands much more information than the aging index card system contains.

“There’s more to cataloging than I thought,” Loura said. “For a book, for example, you have to know where you will put it, who brought it in, author, date published. And there’s also a legal part to it indicating who donated it and whether [the title] is free and clear. We’ve had issues in the past with people donating items and then their children wanting to have them back, so this will help in the future with that.”

Fringe benefits the society is hoping to realize with the effort are increased donations of items and money, as people realize the society is a modern operation that has a grasp on its holdings and that it plays a role in protecting the history of the area.

“Other historical societies such as Lovell who have done this say donations increase since people appreciate the service, which is important to us as a nonprofit,” Soldier said.

But mostly, the society is pursuing the project to preserve history in more relevant terms that a modern person, who is unable to visit the society in person, can relate to.

“I think historical societies need to be up-to-date,” Soldier said, “and the image of the society only being open two hours a week will be gone once we have this system in place, because we’ll be open on the Internet all the time.”