Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn A Modern Vision for an Historic Cemetery | Page 10

Family Digitization
Days
By Jenny Gilbert, Director of Institutional Advancement
Last fall, with a $10,0 0 0 Common He ritage
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
(PY-253094-17), the Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery
partnered with the New England Document Conservation
Center (NEDCC), the Cambridge Public Library, and the
Watertown Free Library, to host two digitization days that
were open to the public free of charge. During the days,
members of the public brought in a range of paper-based
archival cultural heritage materials, such as photographs and
letters, for digital preservation. People who were interested
could also sit in on presentations given by the NEDCC
about current digital preservation techniques that they can
use at home.
The Cemetery is now offering digitization services on
the first Friday of every month, at which time members
of the public can have their family materials digitized. The
materials can then be easily shared and can help tell the
stories of departed ancestors and loved ones through the
Cemetery’s new online memorial pages.
“Looking at the photographs and hearing the memories
at the ‘Digitization Days’ related to these documents
reinforced the importance of preserving family histories for
individual and public knowledge,” said Kara Zelasko, Public
History student at Northeastern University who assisted
with Mount Auburn’s Digitization Days this past October.
Her Northeastern classmate and fellow former Mount
Auburn Cemetery intern Brittany Costello agreed, “For
the families, it is a way to connect to their past and preserve
memories for future generations. Providing the public with
access to these stories creates a sense of community and
makes history more personal.”
At our first Family Digitization Day, Rayna Tulysewski stopped by with
her great Aunt Mrs. Lombard’s permission ticket to walk through the
Cemetery on Sundays and Holidays (Mrs. Lombard’s photo was attached
to the ticket, which dates back to 1877).
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