What to Bring: Family photos, letters, recipes, family bibles, scrapbooks, and other historical documents. You can also contribute to Stillwater’s digital legacy. We are especially interested in Stillwater-area home photographs, deeds, and other house-related documents and records that could contribute to the house-history resources in the library's St. Croix Collection.

What NOT to Bring: Any item under copyright. If you are in doubt, you may bring the item and library staff can work with you to determine whether it may still be under copyright, though we will err on the side of caution. We also are unable to scan slides or film at this event.

Limits: 30 items or less. Please note that a single page counts as one item (for example, a scrapbook consisting of 10 back-and-front pages equals 20 items). We will do our best to scan items within the one-hour period, but please be aware that we may not be able to scan all of your items. You may wish to prioritize items in order of importance in advance of your appointment.

What to expect: 

Scanning appointments are one hour long. At your personal appointment, library staff and volunteers will: 

1. Scan your physical materials to create digital files, which you will take home on a flash drive.

2. Work with you to collect information about your materials (names, people in photographs, dates, etc.) to include with these files.

3. Provide you with information on the best ways to preserve your physical materials to keep them in good shape at home.

4. We will ask you to donate a digital copy of your materials to the library. These copies may then be shared on the library’s website, social media channels, or other online sites, such as the Minnesota Digital Library. This will allow others from the world to access these treasures as they conduct genealogical or other historical research. You may also choose to opt-out of this.