Preparing Artifacts Of The 'Great War' For The Digital Age

Rick Maynard found the manila envelope containing letters from the battlefields of World War I while he and his sister were cleaning out the basement after their father’s death.

 

The more than three dozen letters were written, some in pencil, by Paul Maynard, Rick’s great-uncle.

“He was on the front lines,” said Rick Maynard, the parks and recreation director for the town of Guilford. “In one of the letters to his mother, he said he had not slept in 10 days. I can’t imagine it. I can’t fathom that.”

Soon, letters such as those from 21-year-old Paul Maynard, who died in 1918 during the last day of battle, will be available for anyone to read, thanks to a project spearheaded by the Connecticut State Library to help mark the 100th anniversary of the U.S. involvement in the war.

The library is hosting events across Connecticut, inviting people to bring in photos, letters and any artifacts associated with the “Great War” to be photographed or scanned for posterity. Students and veterans also conduct interviews with the owners to get a history of the items and the people to whom they are linked.

The library says it has the largest World War I archive of any U.S. state.

Since the project began in 2014, about 130 people have come to events, resulting in the digital preservation of more than 600 items and the creation of about 150 profiles of people who took part in the war effort.