If enough volunteers, armed with digital cameras, can be found, a pictorial history of Hernando County will be preserved for all the world to see.

"The object is to make a digital collection from the photographs that belong to the Hernando Heritage Museum and ultimately be available to anyone on the World Wide Web through the Tampa Bay Library Consortium, " said Roger Landers of the Hernando County Historical Advisory Commission.

"What we'll be doing, " Landers said of the undertaking to be launched in mid May, "is taking what the museum has and ultimately making it available to the world. The second part is to archive and preserve."

There is no cost involved. "The only thing we need is volunteers to sit with us and do cataloging, digitizing and organizing." Landers said. "No experience necessary."

The agreement with the Tampa Bay Library Consortium is that the consortium's Legacy Project will provide whatever assistance is necessary to get the job done. "All we have to do is provide the time, " Landers said.

They date back to tintypes from the 1850s, black and whites from the 1890s before electricity came to the county, and scenes from the 1940s and 1950s.

In a box that Landers recently leafed through were pictures of old schools, World War II soldiers at a dance in Brooksville, troops of the Brooksville Division of the Florida National Guard, early rock mining and citrus grove workers, newspaper reproduction plates from Centralia, the large timber mill of the early 20th century in the vicinity of what is now Silverthorn, and the courthouse before it was renovated in 1969.

The photographing and cataloging will take place at the Russell Street Museum, off South Main Street in Brooksville, during hours when the museum is closed to the public.

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