STEUBENVILLE — The Jefferson County Historical Association is participating in the Italian Diaspora Archive Research Map project, a project associated with the Smithsonian Institution and the Heinz History Center.

The group is seeking to explore and catalog the Italian diaspora experience in the Tri-State Area, with those at the museum interested in discovering, creating and cataloging oral histories of Italians throughout the Ohio Valley.

Those in the group say they want to capture the “rich history of the Italian immigrants who settled in the Ohio Valley.”

A committee was formed, consisting of people affiliated with the Italian American Cultural Club. The committee met Sept. 4 at the museum to discuss how the group can reach Italians living within the area.

The IDARM working group has spent the past year and a half evaluating the presence, accessibility and visibility of archival resources in the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia areas.

Their goal has been “to move in incremental steps toward the creation of an accessible, searchable digital resources to direct users to repositories within the area — containing rich and unique resources that reflect a rich and unique population — to encourage investigation.”

“A resource such as this is a response to the gross oversight of this region in research of all kinds and aims to ensure that the Tri-State Area is no longer overlooked as a site of serious inquiry on the Italian diaspora experience,” stated Joan McGlone on behalf of the committee. “This project, which enjoys the collaboration of large and small archives, historical centers, museums and universities, aspires to eventually go beyond this Tri-State region, leveraging the accomplishments of this first phase in order to expand to other rust-belt, industrial centers that haven’t been fully-explored in the scholarship, and whose resources are underutilized.”

For information about IDARM, contact Melissa Marinaro at memarinaro@heinzhistorycenter.org.

The group is led by three women from the Heinz History Center, the University of Pittsburgh and Loyola University in Chicago, who are working to create a digital resource that reflects the spread of Italian immigrants throughout the Tri-State Area.

With their help, the Jefferson County Historical Association volunteers and committee members hope to create a collection of artifacts, documents, photographs and other items reflecting and showcasing the Italian heritage that is a large part of the Ohio Valley. Plan are to include oral histories which tell of how and why their Italian ancestors came to the Ohio Valley.

Questionnaires can be received by calling or e-mailing any of the following volunteers and committee members: Joan Farchione McGlone at mandjmcglone@frontier.com or (740) 424-4915; Linda Hilty at signpainter@netzero.net or (740) 317-1598; Elida Petrella at econtcher@comcast.net; Michele Fabbro at mfabbro2@comcast.net; or Vicki Nurczyk at victoria.nurczyk@omeresa.net.