Museum Software Keeps La Grange Area Historical Society Organized

Every time I visit the, 444 S. La Grange Rd., I notice something that I hadn’t seen before. On my last visit, I spotted an old map of La Grange that I don’t remember seeing. I asked volunteer Mary Ann Sward if it had always been in that spot and she responded, “It’s been there every time you’ve been here.” That got me thinking about the amount of items they have and how they keep them all straight.

When I asked about cataloguing all their treasures, three volunteers quickly responded, “You need to talk to Ed our computer guy.”

I talked to Ed Thoele, the resident ‘computer guy’ who has been a long-time volunteer at LGAHS to find out how they keep all their treasures organized.

“Last year we were able to purchase museum software, Past Perfect, through a grant we received from the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board.” Thoele told me. According to Thoele they started cataloguing the society's over 8,100 items about a year ago. They recently reached the 4,000 mark and hope to complete the initial cataloguing in another year.

Thoele explained the process, “All items are photographed and added into the system. This is time consuming since we rely on volunteers and we all had to learn the software. We are limited to one computer for all the work, so that slows us down also.”

The software can help keep track of location, condition, who donated, use key words and show pictures.

“In the past when we needed to locate an item we relied on volunteers remembering where it was last placed.” Thoele explained.

With the software, an item can be located quickly with just a quick search or query.

“Now when a new exhibit is being planned we can do a quick search and quickly locate all the items we want to display and look at pictures to help decide which to display," he said. "This will cut down on exhibit set-up enormously.”

Currently they are using the software for items and donations they have collected throughout the years. One daunting task the society is still trying to decide on how to handle is the digitizing of all the paper files that take up file cabinet after file cabinet.

An interesting project that Thoele tackled was digitizing the 1892 La Grange Directory, which lists all the residents, their addresses and their profession. It is currently available in PDF format for viewing on the LGAHS website. I found it extremely interesting to see the types of professions that were popular and how some of the addresses were listed as locations without street addresses.

There’s still plenty of work to do with this on-going project. If you’re interested in volunteering, click here to access a volunteer application. Even if you only have a few hours to spare, why not come in and help out? You never know what you might be cataloguing.