After 10 years of September library love, Carnegie looks to past and future

You may have noticed one in a shop window or planted in the front yard of a family home — not just in Carnegie, but around the whole county.

Those bold red signs with their succinct message — “Love Your Library” — refer to a generous partnership in which the Jack Buncher Foundation matches gifts to Allegheny County libraries during September.

And for the 10th year of Love Your Library at the Carnegie Carnegie, we’ll be doing something special.

As I’ve often mentioned in this column and elsewhere, one of my favorite things about working at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall is how deeply this organization is embedded in community history.

After all, in 1894 the newly formed Borough of Carnegie chose to name itself after steel titan Andrew Carnegie in hopes of coaxing him to fund the construction of the very building I’m writing from. And for nearly 125 years, generations of Carnegieans have thought of the library as their own.

I often hear community members reminisce about their visits to the library decades ago, as though stepping through our doors returns them to a smaller version of themselves clutching the hand of a parent or grandparent.

It’s important to be connected to our own history. For as long as we’ve served the people of Carnegie, the library has collected the daily newspapers that tell the story of our community.

From now-defunct papers like the Mansfield Item and the Carnegie Union to contemporary publications like the Signal Item, 130 reels of microfilm contain more than a century of local newspaper archives.

Delve into this treasure trove, and you’ll find tales of local sports, community celebrations, birth announcements and obituaries, opinion pieces and countless other fascinating slice-of-life details that bring our past alive.

But this wealth of information doesn’t do any good if no one can access it. Not many people know how to use a piece of equipment as bulky and dated as a microfilm reader, and, of course, you can’t digitally search microfilm.

Let’s say you want to find any reference to members of a certain family in the newspaper archives. You’d need to scroll through, page by page by page. Needless to say, this is extremely time-consuming.

That’s why our goal for this year’s Love Your Library campaign is to raise funds to digitize our newspaper microfilm and making it freely available to the public.

Browsing or searching the past hundred-plus years of Carnegie history will be simple and straightforward, opening up countless opportunities for Carnegieans to rediscover and engage with their past.

For a $75 donation, you can even directly sponsor the digitization of an entire specific reel – maybe the one that contains your birth date, a significant date to your family or another historical event.

We’ll still be giving out snazzy Love Your Library stickers, pins, lanyards and tote bags for any donation level. Donors also can opt to adopt a magazine, sponsoring the cost of the library’s annual subscription. Check out CarnegieCarnegie.org/loveyourlibrary for all the details.

And speaking of days past, don’t miss our annual benefit Sept. 26 — Gatsby: A Jazz Age Celebration. The glitz of the Roaring ’20s will be in full force as attendees enjoy cocktails; an electrifying performance by the Adam Lee-Morgan Jazz Orchestra; hosting by emcee Natalie Bencivenga; and an afterparty featuring food, drinks and dancing. Reserve your tickets at CarnegieCarnegie.org.

My thanks to all of our supporters for your generosity, and I look forward to being able to announce our new community newspaper archive.

Walker Evans is the library director of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall.