- About 5,000 artifacts need to be digitized before the museum moves to a new building next year.
- During COVID, only 500-600 items were digitized, so over 4,400 pieces are still only available in person.
- Watch the video below to see how Leadership Thomas Class 42 volunteers plan to finish the project.
Leadership Thomas works to digitize 5,000 artifacts at the Jack Hadley Museum of African American History
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
More than 5,000 pieces of Thomasville’s black history sit on shelves, and if something happens to them, that history could be gone forever.
I’m checking out how Leadership Thomas is rushing to digitize every item before the museum moves to a new building.
The Jack Hadley Museum of African American History holds stories you can’t find anywhere else…thousands of photographs, documents and artifacts dating back generations.
And that’s why it should be accessible to everyone…not just here in Thomasville, but to anyone who wants to learn about this history.
One way to do this is by digitizing the entire collection.
“There’s a lot of things there that I hadn’t even seen and didn’t know existed until we went and visited the Museum of African American History,” Dollar said.
Chandler Dollar is one of 21 neighbors participating in Leadership Thomas: a year-long chamber program that chooses an important project to improve the community.
This year, his class decided to digitize all 5,000 pieces as a final project.
“Mr. Hadley, he’ll be 90 next year, so he’s definitely old school, but he knows the importance of scanning and digitizing things and making them more accessible online. He was impressed by the amount of help and willingness that the Leadership Thomas group has,” Pittman said.
Daniel Pittman is the museum’s executive director and says this project is huge to protect the collection and share it far beyond Thomasville.
Digitizing everything means more access, more preservation, and ensuring Mr. Hadley’s work lives on.
“Another reason why it’s so timely for us to digitize a lot of this material is that we’re in the process of raising money for a new museum building. It’s a perfect time for us to try to digitize as much as possible before the move, before everything starts going into boxes and then getting mixed up, and we have to put everything back on the walls,” Pittman said.
During COVID, the museum digitized between 500 and 600 items, but that still leaves approximately 4,400 artifacts that only exist in physical form.
The group plans to scan about 30 items per volunteer each two-hour session over the next few months…hoping to have everything online before the move.
“I think it’s extraordinary that they chose this. I can tell you that there have been reports that there are classrooms in California that have come to the Jack Hadley Museum of African American History and been able to see some of their artifacts through the digitization that they’re doing now,” said Suzannah Heald, chief operating officer of the Chamber of Commerce.
Leadership Thomas hopes to finish scanning the entire 5,000-piece collection by May of next year.
Want to see more local news? Visit the WTXL ABC 27 website.
Stay in touch with us anywhere, anytime.
Like on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram and X.