Since the mid-1970s, the Silver City Museum has been engaged in a variety of ambitious projects to make regional history information accessible to researchers and the general public. We indexed early Silver City newspapers dating from 1873-1886 in a joint effort with the Silver City Public Library, and the results of this project were compiled into biographical files on hundreds of individuals. The newspaper indexes have been supplemented extensively with information dating through the 1920s and beyond, including numerous obituaries, and we also indexed county birth and death records.

In 1979 the Museum undertook a historic building inventory of Grant County under contract with the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, a project which would extend over five years. The project included field survey of thousands of individual pre-1945 buildings, augmented with extensive research on these properties in newspapers, oral histories, deeds and tax rolls, and historic photographs. As a result of this work five Silver City historic districts, two Grant County historic districts, and one Catron County historic district were nominated to the state and national registers; all structures within the Silver City Historic District were evaluated for contributing or non-contributing status; and Built to Last: An Architectural History of Silver City, New Mexico was written and published. Data generated during the building inventory project has become an important resource for property owners and other researchers as the years have passed. The original inventory forms are on file at the Museum and may be viewed by appointment.

Recognizing that digital access will reach the widest audience for our research materials, since 1993 we have concentrated on getting our most important historical records into digital form. Over 27,000 records from our newspaper index were transcribed from 3"x5" cards into a database. A volunteer computer specialist has undertaken the laborious clean up process needed to make these records publicly accessible.

Grants from the New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board (NMHRAB) in 2000 allowed us to digitize 2,000 images from the O.L. Hinger photo collection and the Percy Pogson photo collection, as well as digitizing and filming the contents of over 100 volumes of original local records in our collection. As part of this project we created a 12,385-record database index to 21 of the most-requested volumes. We also have a database of early Grant County marriage records, which were indexed only in the husband's name in the original record book.

The Research Library is open to visitors during regular Museum hours. The Museum staff is available to assist researchers in accessing resource materials Tuesday through Friday, although advance appointments are strongly encouraged to allow us to give you our best service. During weekend hours library materials are available on a self-serve basis. Photocopies and microfilm copies made are available at 25 cents per page. Currently, we are transcribing our newspaper index card file into a database. The history database will be available for public access soon, but our staff will be glad to check this source for references to a particular family or individual.