Tulsa Historical Society And Museum Adds 50,000 Photos To Online Archive

The Tulsa Historical Society and Museum has now added 50,000 of its photos online. This means anyone can view pieces of Tulsa's history, any time they want and all for free.

"This has been a 20 year project, not as much time as been dedicated in the past to digitizing, but we've been putting a lot of hours into it currently," said archivist Luke Williams.

The archive is full of more than 250,000 photos and they are getting as many put online as they can.

Archivist Luke Williams said each photo has a unique number, and that's scanned in with the photo as well as a brief description.

"Digitizing is, we digitize on a scanner, convert the photo to a digital format, then we input that into our software, so there is some cataloging involved also," he said.

He said while they've been digitizing photos for years, it really became a priority during the pandemic when more and more people were viewing archives online.

He said this is a way to make sure people have access to Tulsa's history.

"Our mission is to preserve and safeguard Tulsa's history, we want to be able to tell everybody's story," he said.

He said it's also important to digitize the collection as we move into a more modern world, and it's a great opportunity for people to see photos they may have never seen.

"It's a good feeling to be able to put these images online, and someone in the community says, 'that's a photograph of my mother, I've never seen this photograph before,' so preserving these photographs and making them available, that's a good feeling," he said.

Williams said the work never stops, and they will continue to digitize the remaining photos, as well as each new photo they receive.

To access the photos on the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum website, click here.