Digitizing the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum's Collections

FAIN: PB-275427-20

West Virginia Mine Wars Museum (Matewan, WV 25678-0764)
Mackenzie New Walker (Project Director: May 2020 to October 2021)

Three staff members and necessary supplies for the digital cataloguing of artifacts related to the 1920-21 Mine Wars and to make available online a selection of the collection in order to engage virtually with visitors and members and sustain and increase the visibility of the institution.

The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum is seeking support to digitize their unique collection of Mine Wars artifacts, offer a select preview of them online, and expand the museum's education offerings. These artifacts tell the story of a great struggle that took place in the mountains of West Virginia and the civil rights that miners fought for between 1900 and 1921, when the class tension and violence of the Mine Wars period reach its height at the Battle of Blair Mountain. The museum hosts the largest single collection of publicly-accessible artifacts about the Mine Wars period, and this project will make the collection more broadly available to the general public and readily accessible to students, teachers, and scholars interested in studying the Mine Wars era. With access to the museum's archives and artifacts students can use these resources for research projects and gain access to materials unavailable in their schools or history textbooks.