Bringing Census Records to Life
A Project to Pursue
Visitors talked about treasured family recipes, growing up in Baltimore and adventures with household artifacts. Additionally, they voiced a desire to learn more about their relatives. That led me to take a look at the Library’s genealogy and family history collections.
The Library offers four departments where visitors can do research. It gives them access to state and local newspapers, Sanborn maps, and a database created by ancestry.com called, Ancestry Library Edition.
While these resources are fabulous, I felt they were were too complex for the cart format. I needed something more like an appetizer. So, I focused on census records from the Ancestry Library Edition.
Census records are fantastic. They contain rich details such as family member names, marital status, household composition, birth year, addresses, and occupations.
As with all my projects, I set goals. For this project, my goals were:
- Design a format that people can touch and manipulate
- Create visually pleasing artifacts that inspire visitors to consider what they can do
- Use inexpensive materials
- Use my own family’s history to present an authentic voice
We started project testing in late February. Unfortunately, Covid-19 struck and we abandoned the project. That left me with odds and ends of unfinished project prototypes around the house. After weeks of Covid shut-downs and surges, I decided to finish the prototypes. I stored them in my attic for my nieces and nephews to discover some day. What follows are examples of several finished prototypes.