Viewing Scottsdale history through pictures
by Brian DiTullio

SCOTTSDALE – History is popping out of the books and coming alive through a collection of photographs at the Scottsdale Public Library.

Library Public Services Manager Carol Damaso is one of several people involved in a new project to showcase Scottsdale’s history through photographs. Several hundred photos are

already archived with the library from earlier projects, but this project focuses on collecting pictures from the 1940s and forward in time to build a more complete pictorial history of the area.

This project, from the Scottsdale Leadership Class, has been ongoing. The photos were due in to the library with the project leaders on April 13. Project leaders had collected more than 200 photos as of the deadline.

Damaso stressed that the library will continue to accept photos after the deadline.

“Photos are still being accepted,” she said. “We’re taking all photographs. This project just focuses on the 1940s and forward.”

The library currently has 67 photos in their 1930s collection, and more than 600 photos in the entire library collection dating back to the late 1800s when the city first was settled. Not all have been digitally scanned, and only about half the places and/or people in the photographs have been identified.  

Marita Ralston, in charge of the photo collection process, said it is up to her group to choose which photos have historical significance. Criteria Ralston looks at include the ability to identify the people in the photos, if the location of the image can be determined, and if the person submitting the photo knows when the picture was taken.                     

“Once we go through the process, we hand those photos off to the technical people for digitization,” she said.

While an unidentified photo doesn’t automatically disqualify it from the collection, it does face an uphill battle.

However, one of the main photos on the Scottsdale Public Library Web site, library.scottsdaleaz.gov/local/historicphotos.cfm, titled “Early Scottsdale Residents and Their Guns,” features several women holding shotguns sometime around the World War I era. None of the women have been identified, but Damaso hopes the catchy photo attracts a descendant of one the women in the photo who would be able to clear up the mystery.

Ralston said many of the photos are donated, but several others have been lent to the library and will be returned once they are not chosen, or accepted and scanned in to the library’s digital database.