October 16, 2018
Shawnee State University is proud to announce the Digital History Lab has received a generous donation of $10,000 from Linda Donaldson.
Donaldson is a Portsmouth community member and business owner of Copies Galore on Second Street. She is also a member of Main Street Portsmouth. Donaldson has a degree in Library Science from the University of Kentucky. She has previously worked at the Portsmouth Library with Janet Steward, Dean of SSU’s Clark Memorial Library.
The Donaldson gift will help SSU students, faculty, and librarians preserve Portsmouth history for years to come. The funds will assist in a number of ongoing undergraduate research projects under the direction of the Shawnee Digital History Lab. In the first year, funds will help purchase equipment for a Mobile Digitization Field Kit, which includes a laptop computer, digital camera, audio recorder with microphone, and a mobile flatbed scanner for creating archival copies of documents and photographs.
Additional funds will assist the Shawnee Digital History Lab with its work on the Historic Portsmouth Newspaper Project, a decade-long initiative to digitize over 140 years of the city’s newspapers that date back to the 1840s. Various archival supplies, such as the mold-filtering respirators, software and a large-format scanner, will be purchased to facilitate the processing of the collection.
“The Portsmouth community and SSU students have been blessed with Linda’s donation. Especially in a time of shrining library and research budgets across the state of Ohio, her donation will make it possible for the Shawnee Digital History Lab and the Clark Memorial Library to advance local historic preservation and undergraduate research,” said Andrew Feight, Ph.D., Professor of American History at SSU. “Thanks to donations like Donaldson’s, SSU can help the community save its history and ensure that future generations learn about the city’s role in the larger narrative of American history.”
To make your own gift in support of Shawnee State University, please contact the Shawnee State Development Foundation at (740) 351-3284 or go to givetossu.com.