Archives
Founded in 1921 with a gift by John T. Loomis, who was a historian and dedicated collector of Adirondackana, the Archives has expanded to include much material from the Adirondack Bibliography, authored by Dorothy Plum of Keene. In addition, since 1987, the Archives has housed the records of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. Containing a large collection of photographs and local historical and genealogical materials, the Archives is open each Tuesday and Thursday morning for research and study.
KEENE VALLEY ARCHIVES REPORT
March, 2024
Partnerships have been playing an important role in our Archives. While the Keene Library building was being renovated, the contents of their Archives Collection was housed here in Keene Valley. Tony Goodwin, as Town Historian, has reviewed, organized and arranged housing for the Keene Library Archives. Some of what was processed duplicated what we have, but there have been some interesting and valuable additions made to our now-joint collection. Tony continues to work here and has taken on the project of reviewing and organizing our fairly substantial map collection.
Margaret Hawthorn has joined with the Keene Historical Society in a couple of projects. Along with Peter Slocum, Margaret is working on extensive work in area cemeteries. There are nearly a dozen cemeteries in the Town of Keene, many of which need work on the grounds and headstones. Margaret, Peter and other volunteers have initially focused their efforts on the Estes Cemetery, cleaning the grounds and repairing and cleaning headstones. The most famous resident of the cemetery is the 19th-century guide “Old Mountain” Phelps.
Margaret is also working with the Historical Society to present programs in May at Keene Arts. Topics include area guides and guiding, the manufacture of furniture at Keene Valley Industries during the 1930’s, and The Keene Hill Climb on East Hill Road from 1950 to 1966. This partnership with Keene Arts, the historical society, and the library, insures greater visibility and understanding of the project.
The progress of uploading our digitized images is moving along. We have contracted with a vendor to host the collection and I am adding images and individual descriptions regularly. Our collection of digitized images includes nearly 10,000 items; work on this project keeps us busy.
Our collection is gaining notoriety as we receive queries from various researchers as well as local residents. We are pleased to offer access to the contents of our Obituary Index, our Vertical File, our cemetery index, our photographs and negatives, our Manuscript Collection and other resources. We have also begun a process of sharing with other archive collections in the system.
Elizabeth Rogers
Margaret Hawthorne
ANNUAL REPORT
Keene Valley Library Archives
August 28, 2023
It’s been a productive and busy year in the Archives. Tony Goodwin (Town Historian) has been working here with us and is organizing the contents of the Keene Library Archives, housed here during the construction project at the Keene Library. We have scanned images from and are housing much of this collection. The Keene collection includes a large number of photographs of and comments on many of the Town roads and houses. We have placed the contents of these notebooks in archival-quality sleeves. These are a popular resource; we have had great interest in histories of various properties in the Town of Keene as visitors have emailed or stopped in to explore the stories of their homes. In sharing the contents of the Keene Archives we have been able to provide improved access and a good storage environment for the contents.
I have been working with a vendor-purchased platform to load our vast collection of images online. This is an important project and provides remote access to our images. Since we have around 7000 scanned images, this is an ongoing and long-term project. Margaret has begun entering descriptive data of our manuscript collection using this platform as well.
Margaret continues her work with the oral history project “Adirondack Community,” compiling transcripts of recorded stories.
We continue to provide information and images in answer to queries we receive from visitors and through correspondence.
We were pleased to receive a visit from Bob Bayle, author of An Adirondack portfolio, 1902-1935: the hiking stories and photographs of Francis Bayle, which provides a record of his father’s extensive hiking and includes many photographs of our area. In addition to gifting us with a copy of the book, Bayle provided us with scans of several views, new to our collection, of nearby peaks.
Elizabeth Rogers
Margaret Hawthorn