History at your fingertips

Anyone working on a genealogy or local history project, or those who just want to browse volumes on the area’s past, now have a one-stop shop in the new Tsceminicum Club Local History Room at the Lewiston City Library.

The resource officially opened last week on the first floor of the library at 411 D St. It offers around 2,000 items centered on not just Lewiston lore, but that of the surrounding area and the entire state.

“We’re just delighted to have it available for the public,” Library Director Lynn Johnson said. “It’s been a long time coming, and so we’re happy to have it open.”

The Lewiston Library Board of Trustees gave the green light to remodel the space into a local history room last year. City staff worked on the physical remodeling while former library Director Dawn Wittman and longtime library volunteer and employee Susan Jones focused on organizing the materials, which had been stored in the library basement for years.

That had been a source of consternation for members of the Twin Rivers Genealogy Society, who donated piles of their work to the library only to see it stashed away and available only by appointment. In contrast, the local history room is open for use whenever the library is open.

But Jones said she spent around 500 hours over the past several months going through that collection and the library’s other historical materials to cull the gems and put them on shelves for the benefit of all library patrons.

“I’ve been really pleased,” Jones said. “It was certainly a challenging and fascinating project to work on.”

Jones, who is originally from Texas, said she inadvertently became fairly knowledgeable on local history during her time sorting through the stacks.

“That’s been enjoyable, to have this kind of feel for the whole collection,” she said.

One of the greatest challenges was deciding what should go in the room and what should stay in the basement. An example was the two carts of genealogy materials she initially brought up. There was so much that she and Wittman decided to include only items with a solid Northwest foundation.

“If we couldn’t find some connection to a local family, they went back downstairs,” Jones said, noting that there is still room to grow. “We really wanted to not make this a static collection, but a collection that grows. As people donate, we can add more things.”

Jones also pulled items from the library’s regular collection that made sense to include in a local history room, like its volumes on Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery and biographies on local luminaries. Local census records owned by the library weren’t included since they are now readily available online.

The room also features a computer terminal where users can access the genealogy database ancestry.com. And the computer is situated on a piece of history itself, one of the tables from the city’s original library that was built in Pioneer Park with a $10,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. The history-focused Tsceminicum Club won that grant, and the room is named in the club’s honor.

Jones said she is excited that the new resource is now available to the public, and expressed a desire that it will change the perception among some patrons that downtown might not be the best place for the city library.

“I hope the community enjoys being in here and seeing the history,” she said. “But I also hope the community gets a better sense of what the library has to offer.”

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.