The McLean County Museum of History is the recipient of two digitization grants to expand its efforts in making the Pantagraph Negatives Collection more readily available to the public online. The first grant in the amount of $96,650 is from the Illinois State Library. The money will be used to digitize an additional 45,000 images. This grant is part of the Illinois History Digital Imaging Grant Program.
The second grant is a $5,000 matching grant from the Illinois Historical Records Grant Program through the Illinois State Archives. An additional 5,600 images representing the entire 1952 year will be digitized, metadata embedded, and uploaded to the Illinois Digital Archives. Contact Norris Porter by email here or by cell at 309-706-9242 if you would like to make a contribution to help the Museum achieve the $5,000 required match.
The collection includes approximately 1 million negatives from the 1930s – 2000s. Over 78,000 negatives have already been digitized and uploaded to the Illinois Digital Archives with the help of a 2019 IMLS Grant. Students, teachers, genealogical and academic researchers, and the general public continue to benefit from this collection.
