seekingmichigan.org

This morning I as poking around seekingmichigan.org. The Library of Michigan and Archives of Michigan have been putting together this site:

To enrich quality of life by providing access to unique historical information that promotes Michigan’s cultural heritage. We define cultural heritage as the stories of Michigan’s families, homes, businesses, communities and landscapes as told by unique source documents, maps, films, images, oral histories and artifacts.

You can search the site, use the "Discover" section to browse the site's resources or read interesting tidbits that have been pulled into a blog in the "Look" section. The "Teach" section is another blog that provides "Ideas for teaching kids to Seek, Discover, and Look at Michigan’s Stories."

The site includes some great primary documents including maps ( always a personal favorite), WPA Property Inventories, civil war photographs and more.

Perhaps the most ambitious project is digitizing 1,000,000 Michigan Death Records from 1897-1920. They are about 1/3 of the way through the project, so if you are looking for someone who died in Michigan in those years Seeking Michigan could be a good place to start.

This is a great site. Hopefully we'll see more from it and more like it in the future.