Gather any important photos and bring them to the Library's Scan Day! Take advantage of this free opportunity to have your images scanned and returned to you. Bring your own flash drive to save the digital copies.

You will be able to scan up to 15 photos for digital preservation. Appointments can be made for a 30 minute time slot.

Do you have photos of Village of Chatham or surrounding area people, places, events, buildings, in family photo albums? Letters, memoirs, posters or artwork? Or do you have souvenirs or other artifacts related to the history of the Village of Chatham or surrounding area?

Cultural heritage isn’t found only in libraries and museums. It’s found in homes where family mementos are preserved and photos are cherished. Do you have photos of a game at the Community Center, or your children visiting Santa at Light Up the Park or marching in a Homecoming parade? Help Chatham Area Public Library capture this vitally important part of our community’s heritage and preserve it for future generations.

Scan Days offer an opportunity to preserve for posterity personal items that have a connection to the Chatham area.

All items to be scanned must be personally owned and have some connection to the Chatham area. Artifacts can range from business calendars, products made in the Chatham area, school banners, to commemorative plates.

For photos, it is helpful to have as much information as is known including when and where the photo was taken and names of those in the photos.

Items that are copyrighted, such as professional photographs, will not be scanned unless written permission is obtained from the copyright holder. Participants will receive a copy of the digital scans on a portable digital storage device.

With the owner‘s permission by signing a non-exclusive license, the images will be made accessible through the Illinois Digital Archive. (Signing the Deed of Gift to share the images is not required to have qualifying items scanned.)

If you are also willing to share any Chatham area photos to be added to our local history archive, Chatham Area History, we will present you with a complimentary flash drive containing digital copies of all your scanned photos.

If you have any questions, please contact Alanna Sablotny, local history and genealogy reference librarian at asablotny@chathamlib.org or 217-483-2713.