HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The digitization project of the collection of Pat Mitchell for the Reno County Museum is progressing.
"With our grant for $3,498 from Humanities Kansas we have purchased all the storage supplies we need for processing Pat Mitchell's collection to get it ready to digitize," said Thomas Walters, Lead Archivist. "We have processed 582 items. We are focusing predominantly on her collection of photo negatives from Hirst studio here in Hutchinson, all from the 1930s with the vast majority of the people in the photos named."
The Hutchinson Community Foundation – Fund for Hutchinson awarded over $15,000 a year for two years to the project back in May, so the items could be digitized by Wichita State University and the resulting images will be made freely available to the public via WSU’s special collections website.
"We are hoping to send the first batch of items for digitization to WSU by the end of the month," Walters said. "Nothing is certain yet."
The Pat Mitchell collection has over thirty thousand artifacts.