HOLYOKE – The Holyoke History Room and Archives of the Holyoke Public Library has received a $12,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund “Nuestros Senderos: Our Journeys and Our Lives in Holyoke.” The grant is one of only three Common Heritage grants awarded in Massachusetts and thirty-eight nationwide.

The focus of the Holyoke History Room's project is the history of Holyoke's Latino families as well as Latino culture in Holyoke today. Project Director and History Room Archivist Eileen Crosby notes that much of the city's recent history can be told through the experiences of local families and individuals.

“But little of this experience has been collected or preserved. This means that the story of the Puerto Rican diaspora in Holyoke, as well as other stories of Latino life in Holyoke, are difficult to research. Future generations will know their own family stories, but if these are not collected, the larger history will be lost,” she said.

The core of the project will be a community “digitization day.” that will take place at Enlace de Familias on Sept. 24. At this event, members of the public will be invited to bring a selection of their own unique family history materials – photographs, letters, mementos, photo album pages, etc. – to be digitally scanned at no cost. After the scanning, participants get their originals back along with a digital copy. A second digital copy will go into the History Room’s permanent collection for research use by the public.

After the scanning event, the Library will host a public event highlighting some of the family histories gathered in the previous year. Participants in the digitization days will have a chance to tell their own stories by collaborating on displays of their families' histories. Scholars of Latino and Puerto Rican culture will place those stories in broader historical context. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO), with whom the Library has an ongoing collaborative relationship, will offer expertise, advice, and scholarly support for the project.         

Manuel Frau-Ramos, publisher and editor of El Sol Latino and Library Board member, foresees the project as “an outstanding example of what can be accomplished through the partnership between CENTRO and the Holyoke Public Library.”