Digitizing for posterity: Donation funds West Kern Oil Museum's preservation project
Anyone walking into the West Kern Oil Museum in Taft can get an eyeful of the people and activities that helped shape the county's signature industry.
But for a deeper look at the personal histories of individuals who spent their careers in local oil fields over the years — and staff members periodically receive requests of that kind — it takes a lot of work to dig through the museum's vast trove of photos and other resources.
That process is expected to get a lot easier thanks to a local oil producer's recent donation to support the digitization of the museum's archives.
Starting in probably 2026 and continuing for years to come, the museum will be putting online thousands of documents, photographs, newspaper stories, videos and digital representations of its many artifacts.
To this will be added oral histories as recorded by students of Taft Union High School as part of an educational project planned to begin as soon as this year.
Besides benefiting relatives of oil workers, the effort is expected to preserve fragile items for future review by academics studying the area's history.
"The center will not only safeguard invaluable artifacts and records but will also create new opportunities for students and researchers to engage with the legacy of energy in California,' President and CEO Leon Francisco of California Resources Corp. — the company that made the $20,000 donation earlier this year — said in a news release.
'CRC is proud to support the West Kern Oil Museum and the development of the West Kern Research Center, which will ensure the history of Kern County's oil industry is preserved for future generations."
The museum's acting director, Arianna Mace, said Wednesday the company's contribution will fund the purchase of equipment for digitizing records of all kinds, which until now is something "we just don't have the capability to do."
Such work takes time, and Mace said the first items might not go online until next year. She added that the museum staffed primarily by volunteers has already made strides in uploading some of its information to an online database.
No decision has been made yet on how much it will cost researchers to gain access to the online archive, but Mace said viewers may be required to pay for membership to the museum, which costs about $25 per year. Entry to the museum is free of charge but a donation is requested.
The museum located at 1168 Wood St. was established by a group of local women in 1973. In addition to having more than 100,000 photographs, along with every issue of the Taft Midway Driller newspaper on microfilm, it hosts exhibits ranging from the history of local oil production to Native American occupation of the area to vintage automobiles.
Getting it all into digital form, then putting it on the internet for the world to see, isn't going to be a quick process, Mace emphasized.
"We're just scratching the surface right now," she said. "This is going to be an ongoing project, and we're really just starting with the photographs first. This is going to take definitely some time."
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