Avon Lake Public Library offers local history, self-publishing

by Mike Hammer, special to Avon Lake Public Library

If you are interested in reminiscing about or researching various elements of Avon Lake's history, Avon Lake Public Library is now offering a new way to make your search easier. Using the online community content and engagement platform Biblioboard, the Library has digitally made available some hard-to-find community records, reports, and pictures, from as far back as the 1870s.

Individuals can access Biblioboard through the Library's website under the Research/Local History Resources tab on the home page or by visiting Biblioboard directly, clicking Find Your Library, and selecting Avon Lake Public Library. An app is also available for download on Apple, Google, and Kindle Fire devices. If you want to enhance your local history experience, you can create a free account that allows you to save favorite content, create bookmarks, add notes, and sync preferences.

“Library volunteers and staff have spent hundreds of hours scanning documents related to Avon Lake's history, including old photographs, minutes of the Lake Shore Women's Club and Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club, and Avon Lake PTA scrapbooks,” Laura Ploenzke, Adult Services librarian and local history and genealogy specialist at Avon Lake Public Library, said. “The site (Biblioboard) also features various Avon Lake newspapers, predominately The Press, and Avon Lake High School newspapers and yearbooks.”

The Library's online local history collection is especially relevant during the city's bicentennial celebration, which culminates this July 4 with fireworks at Weiss Field. Digital collection highlights include records from Lake Shore Women’s Club; scrapbooks, minutes, and historian's reports from Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club; historical church photos; photos from the construction of the Avon Lake Water Filtration Plant in 1925; photos from local businesses, including CEI Inc. and Freuhauf Trailer Company; Lake Shore Cemetery; and Avon Lake PTA Council scrapbooks. New content is added regularly.

Biblioboard is not just for showcasing local history. You can also find works of fiction, mystery, romance, history, and more from local authors around Avon Lake and throughout Ohio. Biblioboard even offers some titles in e-book form on the site - works in literary fiction, science fiction, young adult, and other categories selected by Library Journal magazine, which focuses on all aspects of libraries and librarianship.

Authors can also use Biblioboard to create, save, and promote their works using Biblioboard's Pressbooks and SELF-e.

"[Biblioboard] offers a variety of features to our patrons, including not only local history, but also a platform for self-publishing, as well as a place to discover local authors in many different genres,” Ploenzke says.

For more information about Biblioboard, or if you are interested in volunteering to help with Avon Lake Public Library's local history digitization project or have items related to Avon Lake's history that you would like to loan or gift to the library, please contact Laura Ploenzke, Adult Services librarian and local history and genealogy specialist, via e-mail at lploenzke@avonlake.lib.oh.us or by phone at 440.933.8127.