What a Treasure!

Late last year, the State Library of Ohio received a call from a staff member at the Office of the Treasurer of the State of Ohio. Were we willing to digitize our run of annual Treasurer’s reports and share them online? Of course we were!!

Our role as a state government agency is one of information-sharing. We collect, preserve, and make available state government information. Through collection and preservation, we have amassed annual reports of various agencies dating back to not long after statehood. As to the annual reports of the Treasurer’s office, our earliest report is from 1825. Making these rare, often fragile, documents available is frequently challenging, however. But by scanning them and placing them in Ohio Memory, we can share them with a larger audience, including the agencies from which they originate.

Thus far, we’ve only completed a small number of these documents, but our goal is to digitize the entire run, all 188 years. This will not only provide a valuable service to the Treasurer’s office, but will also be of use to researchers of varied interests, as they will be able to discover a wealth of interesting facts about taxation and expenditures in Ohio. And, as a fun tidbit, many of the annual reports include photos and give us a glimpse of what was fashionable during the tenure of each treasurer.

We hope you’ll browse through this collection as it grows and that you’ll find information of use and of interest. And don’t forget to visit all of the many other wonderful items available through Ohio Memory!

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Thank you to Shannon Kupfer, Digital/Tangible Media Cataloger at the State Library of Ohio, for this week’s post!