We are excited about The Digitization Project, an opportunity provided by the Connecticut State Library and Library Connection, a non-profit cooperative of 27 academic and public libraries. The Project will assist libraries in digitizing selected items from their collections, making them available to the public through the Internet. We will be choosing items from the library's archival collections as well as working with items provided by the East Haven Historical Society.

We have selected Old Houses of East Haven a compilation by former town historian, Donald V. Chidsey as our first item for digitization. Old Houses is of public interest as it contains photographs and information on historic structures of East Haven, such as the photograph of the Stephen Dodd house shown above. Our intent is to honor Mr. Chidsey's efforts to make this information available as he, in his own words, expressed:

"It has been the purpose of the author in part to gather first hand from East Haven's oldest residents detailed accounts of the old houses and the folk of yesterday who lived in them. In this way it has been possible in some instances to obtain accounts of human interest that took place in this old town in the days of long ago."

There are two versions of the Old Houses of East Haven, the manuscript and the typewritten versions. Each has its own attributes. Among other differences, the manuscript version contains a hand drawn map (shown below) which locates where the houses stood in East Haven. The typewritten version contains actual photographs of the buildings.

The digitized project will make the attributes of both of these versions available through the Internet.