Latah County Historical Society

Purpose: Sustaining Cultural Heritage The Latah County Historical Society has a collection of more than 10,000 items, representing over 130 years of recorded history in the area, from the first settlement in 1871 to the present and including Native American cultures. The collections are closely integrated with the Society's educational mission of interpreting its museum, the 1886 McConnell Mansion. In this project, the historical society will catalog a backlog of materials and train volunteers to assist with registration and data entry procedures. To increase accessibility of the collections, the society will purchase shelving units and sheeting to design and renovate a new storage area in the basement. Volunteers, under the supervision of the collections manager and the cataloger, will organize the artifacts and move them to the storage area. To preserve the collections and increase their safety, the museum will purchase fireproof file cabinets for the photo collection. (The process of transferring photos to the cabinets will also provide an opportunity to inventory this collection.) Finally, the museum will apply fire-retardant paint to the ceilings and walls of the storage rooms and will apply masonry waterproofing in the basement.