Stephanie Zimble is a woman who finds treasure in other people’s “trash.”
The archivist at Oakmont Carnegie Library often can be found prodding people to reconsider basement finds before they end up in the garbage can.
“The more people I can convince not to throw cool stuff away, the better,” Zimble said.
Items she finds fascinating might never register on regular folks’ “cool radar” — journals, calendars, handwritten notes and Polaroid photos.
“A lot of us would think those things aren’t interesting or important, but 100 years from now, it will show people what the community was like,” she said.
Zimble will be the guest speaker at a program by the Fox Chapel Area affiliate of the American Association of University Women on April 8.
The event, “From Your Attic to the Archives,” begins at 10 a.m. at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church, on the corner of Fox Chapel and Field Club roads.
It is free and open to the public.
She will provide a similar session at 6 p.m. May 1 at the Oakmont Carnegie Library.
Archiving photos and other documents is important for preservation and loss mitigation — and especially for historical insight.
Zimble, an archivist for 18 years in Oakmont, said she realizes the task of sorting and storing old documents can be daunting, especially when items seem ordinary.
She cited a journal penned by an Oakmont woman in the late 1800s. It recorded simple daily tasks, such as whom the woman had lunch with or where she shopped.
That diary is a window into time, Zimble said.
“If we didn’t have it to look back on, we wouldn’t get to see what folks were doing in their regular life,” she said. “It’s not old junk.”
Archives can include letters, records, titles, court documents and more.
During the upcoming presentations, Zimble will break down the process into a simple show-and-tell to guide audience members on how to start.
She’ll show examples of items they might have at home and share techniques for the proper ways to save family records.
“It is easy for folks to get overwhelmed,” she said. “A lot of it is about attitude. I try to make them feel excited, not burdened.”
Zimble earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh.
When she took the reins in Oakmont, her primary duty was to sort through the vast amounts of photos, newspapers and documents the library had collected over the years. Now, they are all scanned and available online.
Zimble also provides support through outreach, programming and collection development to library patrons and to the broader Oakmont community.
Zimble particularly enjoys giving the presentation to women’s groups, she said.
“They typically are the recordkeepers,” Zimble said. “People can think their own lives aren’t important, but we are interesting. Some of these paper records will become obsolete at some point.”