Our public introduction of this site and the Hopewell Valley History Project will be the first Wednesday, December 4, held at the Hopewell Train Station as part of the Hopewell Public Library Wednesday Night Out series.
The Hopewell Valley History Project
Wednesday, December 4, 7 pm
Hopewell Train Station, 2 Railroad Place, Hopewell NJ
Free and open to the public
Presented by Doug Dixon
Sponsored by the Hopewell Public Library
Presentation slides and notes from the talk are available here – Hopewell Valley History Project presentation (PDF).
Local enthusiast Doug Dixon will introduce the Hopewell Valley History Project (HopewellHistoryProject.org), a new volunteer effort to collect and organize the important sources of our local heritage in digital form, to share online for open and convenient access.
So are you interested in exploring the history of your house, your neighborhood, your town, your forebearers? The good news is that there’s lots of information available on various sites online, and we also are blessed with a variety of institutions that are collecting and archiving local materials.
But how and where do you get started? How do you figure out the fundamentals, so that you then can dig in deeper? This is the genesis of the Hopewell Valley History Project, which already has posted over 120 key references (including historic e-books and booklets, maps and aerial images, municipal tax maps, and photos and postcards). The site also includes 285 digitized photos and postcards of Hopewell Borough, Pennington, and Titusville buildings and streets, identified by address. And it has research guides that provide overviews of the available materials and references for future research.
Doug will explore this variety of materials, and show examples of how to kick-start your own investigations. So join us to find out more about how we got to here, and to become part of this effort to collect and share our local history online.
Doug Dixon is an independent technology consultant and writer, specializing in Web technology, databases, and digital media. He previously was a product manager and software developer at Intel and Sarnoff. Doug is a board member of the Hopewell Valley Historical Society, and is managing the new HVHS website, along with the Hopewell Public Library website. He also developed the Hopewell-Events.com site that provides consolidated listings of upcoming featured events at local non-profits.
