Barbara Stevens from the Brookfield Historical Society, left, Sarah Moell from the Trumbull County Historical Society, center, and AmeriCorps volunteer Olivia Beebe go through the holdings of the Brookfield society as part of an effort to post 500 photos online.
Thumbing through a group of photos, Barbara Stevens comes across one of the former Elm Street School,
Masury, faculty from 1929-30.
Most of the six women and two men have rather dour, forbidding expressions on their faces.
“I’m glad I didn’t have any of them in school,” quipped Stevens, president of the Brookfield Historical
Society.
The review of the society’s photos is part of a process that will lead it to creating a CatalogIt online
account, and making 500 photos available to the general public from the convenience of a computer.
Trumbull County Historical Society received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services’ Inspire! Grants for Small Museums program to create CatalogIt accounts for the Brookfield,
Kinsman and Cortland historical societies, said Sarah Moell, curator of collections and research for the
Trumbull County Historical Society.
She noted that Brookfield was included because the society does not have public hours in which people
can peruse the society’s archives.
Moell and AmeriCorps volunteer Olivia Beebe met with Stevens Oct. 27 to start the process of going
through Brookfield’s archives, finding what photos are available and choosing an initial 500 that will be
posted online.
“I don’t think we’ll have issues to get to 500, if there was ever any doubt,” Beebe said.
The grant also covers the cost of a scanner, a laptop computer, data loggers for environmental monitoring,
and $500 for supplies.
“Once we have that online, we will rehouse everything into museum-quality storage – acid-free folders,
acid-free boxes, things like that,” Moell said.
The grant sets a two-year window in which to get the work done.
A secondary benefit from the cataloging process is the society will be able to identify photos in which it
has backing documentation for possible inclusion in a Brookfield history book published by Arcadia
Publishing Co., a project the society first proposed about two years ago, but which was shelved by the
COVID-19 pandemic.
In familiarizing herself with the society’s holdings, Stevens said ideas for future programs at society
meetings were coming to mind.
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Brookfield Township Historical Society will resume monthly meetings with a program geared to veterans
at 7 p.m. Nov. 11 in the township administration building, 6844 Strimbu Drive.
Three veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: Dan Barniger, J.P. O’Brien and Patrick Witt, will talk
about their service experiences. The men are from Hubbard.
The meeting will be open to the public.
