"Photograph of the 37th Infantry Division soldiers celebrating Christmas, probably at Bourgainville, Solomon Islands, December, 1943. The 37th served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II under the command of Major General Robert Beightler. They were an Ohio National Guard division, nicknamed the 'Buckeye Division.'"
Our class is about local history, the research involved, and its interpretation. Throughout the entirety of the class and in prior research, I always find myself coming back to a website called "Ohio Memory." It's the culmination of digital collections from hundreds of historical institutions around Ohio, hosted and maintained by the Ohio History Connection and the Ohio State Archives. They call it an "online scrapbook" and it is exactly that. It houses photos and scans of a wide variety of archival documents concerning an enormous variety of historical topics, from Revolutionary War silhouettes to photos of WWII soldiers at Christmas. Also, they include a great deal of information with each of the items. There is almost always a title, dates, provenance, and often links to similar subjects. I've found it to be an invaluable tool for local history research as it allows me to find photos, newspaper articles, and even yearbooks that I couldn't access without at least an hour's, usually more, drive. I can also use individual documents to track down a collection that I need easier than trying to use a string of keywords on the catalog site. It's ridiculously useful for anyone studying local history and I encourage you all to just page through it. The Ohio Memory team even includes educational resources for teachers so that they can utilize the database through lesson plans and timelines.
Sources:
Ohio Memory's website: www.ohiomemory.org
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