Press Release
May 22, 2024
Contact: Jason Harris
The Chisholm, Oklahoma Historical Society
Office: 405-375-5176
jharris@thechisholm.org
thechisholm.org
The Chisholm Receives $10,000 Community Digitization Grant to Improve Access to Collections
KINGFISHER, Okla. — The Chisholm in Kingfisher has just received a $10,000 grant from the Ralph Enix Charitable Fund to digitize a large portion of their image collection. The museum is home to the Eugene Meacham Collection. Meacham, a longtime photographer from Kingfisher, took over 100,000 images during his career at his studio and across the county. While many of the pictures provide details on when, where, and why the photograph was taken, countless images exist with unidentified individuals.
“Today, we are in a unique position to identify who is in many of the pictures, but we won’t be for long,” reported Jason Harris, executive director of the museum. “Right now, we have community members who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who can name the individuals from images taken from the 1940s-1970s. But their ability to help us identify them is quickly fading with time, and we need their help now to preserve our local history.”
This grant will allow the museum to focus on digitizing images without associated names over the next 12 months and making those photographs available through its partner page on The Gateway to Oklahoma History. The Gateway is a free internet-based digital platform created by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) in partnership with the University of North Texas. Since January 2012, the Gateway has registered 14 million searches from over one million items that total over six million individual files. Best of all, anything you find on the Gateway can be downloaded free of charge, shared on social media, and used by visitors for research projects. The staff at The Chisholm will work with community members and social clubs to review and help identify individuals before their names are lost to time.
The Chisholm is an affiliate of the Oklahoma Historical Society. The mission of the Oklahoma Historical Society is to collect, preserve and share the history and culture of the state of Oklahoma and its people. Founded in 1893 by members of the Territorial Press Association, the OHS maintains museums, historic sites and affiliates across the state. Through its research archives, exhibits, educational programs and publications the OHS chronicles the rich history of Oklahoma. For more information about the OHS, please visit www.okhistory.org.
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Editor’s Note: Example photos from The Chisholm collection are available upon request.
