I had a brief chat with the librarian tonight about collections of historical materials that she knows about. The first thing that I was previously somehow unaware of is the 1995 book The History of Doraville, Georgia by Laura and Ken Barré. This book is a well-written account of Doraville’s history, from 1821 when it was part of land ceded by local Creek tribes to the State of Georgia. It has several pages on early history, explaining how early trails and paths have become our highways and boundary lines, among other things. It also has a lot of interesting anecdotes and longer narratives from the lives of many of Doraville’s long-time residents. The DeKalb County library lists 3 copies of this in its collections, one each in special collections in Decatur and Chamblee, and one in the Doraville Library.
Much of the other material she has was collected by the previous librarian, Mr. James Draper, and includes several scrapbooks and other, loose collections of materials such as newspaper articles and photographs. Many of these are currently occupying filing cabinets at the library. The Seniors’ Group recently borrowed some of the material for sorting or annotation, and I suspect that the Seniors’ Group would also include people with a lot of the history in their memories. City Hall currently has some materials, too, including copies of the book described above.
I suspect there are many collections of material like this around the city. The information should definitely be collected and organized somewhere. The library itself is past the limit of being tightly packed, but a small Doraville History room could possibly be built into a 2nd floor if and when one is added. I don’t know of any other spaces around the city right now, and other possibilities I can think of, such as older homes near the city center, would require a larger investment.
As a beginning, it might be good to collect and organize a small amount of material for a small (glass case or a couple of shelves on a bookcase) display. We could use digital copies of a few photographs both to preserve them from display and to preserve them against time. We might form a committee at the Friends of Doraville Library to start moving this forward, and would definitely need to work with other community groups, especially the seniors’ group.
Do any readers of this blog have any materials like this stored away somewhere, or know anybody with such a collection? Are any readers interested and willing to help sort, organize, and label historical materials? Could any of you ask your friends and neighbors about such materials, like newspapers, pictures, programs, etc.? Also, I don’t want to forget oral history stories, like those that started this blog discussion this week.
If you’re interested in this and more central activities of the Friends of Doraville Library, feel free to join our e-mail list at this link, which we use for announcing meetings (every other month), activities like the recent book sale (expected to be twice a year, if we can get Bryan Simonetti to work that hard), and other plans and activities.Also, feel free to contact me about joining this list or about general discussion on this subject at doraville_friends-owner@yahoogroups.com.
As a final note, the Doraville history book above mentions that in 1992, the library had 6 full-time employees (including two professional librarians with advanced degrees in library science) and two part-time librarians. In 2007, we have a much smaller staff of overworked librarians. Just one of the recent City Council requests for information from the Police Department would pay a substantial portion of another full-time librarian’s salary!
That’s great!!
But, I would like to see some of the old photographs of the neighborhood, city hall, Buford Highway, the shopping centers,etc.
Remember, Northwoods was way before 285. From what I understand, at the time, 85 north stopped at Clairmont. So in todays terms Doraville in 1954 was like Cummins or other semi rural areas. I, also, heard, believe it or not, when whoever built Northwoods, there wasn’t a tree in sight!!
Rich,
In the 8th grade, every Georgia public school student takes a course in Georgia history. I remember seeing the maps that showed the Native American trails that became settler horse paths, and those eventually became Peachtree Street (& Peachtree Road), Buford Highway, Briarcliff, Shallowford and the other major streets I hear on traffic reports. It was truly fascinating. I’d love to be able to show my daughter the same sort of thing.
If clippings are really housed in filing cabinets, they need to be stored in a much better spot, and scanned to make digital images before they are lost forever. Even the scrapbooks, unless they are fairly recent, could be hurting the paper–most scrapbooks until the late 1990s were not acid-free or true archival quality. I have a scanner that is fairly lightweight, and could bring it and my laptop to help make digital copies of what we have.
Doraville has lost too much of its structural history, I don’t want us to lose the written documents as well.