Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Premier steamboat collection at UW-L going online

By JENNY DOLAN | La Crosse Tribune

Murphy Library’s collection of 51,000 steamboat and river-related photographs is making waves worldwide.

A man from Italy recently called the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse library, wanting to know more about a steamboat his relative rode, said Linda Sondreal, special collections librarian at UW-L. The man planned to build a model of the boat, she said.

Someday, he and other steamboat buffs will be able find the steamboats by surfing the Internet.

Murphy Library will announce today its partnership with the UW Digital Collections Center at UW-Madison. The center will begin converting the collection to a digital format this fall, said Paul Beck, special collections librarian at UW-L.

The project, paid by the UW system, will take about four years but is well worth the effort, Beck said.

“It doesn’t do much good to sit on 50,000 photos for people who can only come in person to look at them,” Beck said.

The collection includes photos from throughout the country, mainly of steamboats but also steamboat workers and passengers, waterfronts, dams being built, and people fishing and swimming.

Former Murphy librarian Ed Hill started the collection in the early 1970s because steamboats were an integral part of La Crosse and Wisconsin history, Beck said. Library volunteer Ralph DuPae, who worked with Hill, traveled the country for the next 37 years, borrowing photos from libraries and private collectors, Beck said.

“We started out thinking there would be just several thousand (photos),” Sondreal said. “Somehow, it developed a life of its own.”

Jenny Dolan can be reached at (608) 791-8220 or jdolan@lacrossetribune.com.