- 1938 Cover in the Vail, Arizona Digital Exhibit
The Slusser Memorial Philatelic Library of the Postal History Foundation in Tucson, Arizona is setting an excellent example for how postal history can be effectively incorporated into the broader history of our communities and our states. The Library is a partner with the Vail Preservation Society in a new online exhibit/collection entitled “Between the Tracks: The Story of the Old Vail Post Office”. This collaborative effort involved merging photographic items in the Vail Preservation Society with postal history items in the collection of the Slusser Library. The exhibit is part of the Arizona Memory Project which already includes three other collections from the Slusser Library. The Slusser Library is also working on collaborative exhibits about the Arizona post offices in Oracle and Jerome. The Vail, Oracle, and Jerome post office exhibits are being funded with a federal Library Services and Technology Act grant through the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records. The grant is called “Centennial Celebration of Arizona Post Offices” and the goal of this project is to preserve the history of the three post offices in preparation for the state’s Centennial. The postal history artifacts from the Slusser Library which are included in the project are from Slusser’s Arizona Postal Document Collection 1884-1949 which is part of Arizona Archives Online. The efforts of Charlotte Cushman, Slusser Library Librarian/Archivist, and the other folks at the Postal History Foundation to reach out to other cultural institutions to cooperate in promoting local and state history is noteworthy.