Historical facts mixed with the personal tales and photographs of families in East Lansing will be featured in a new book.

Whitney Miller, an MSU records archivist, is writing a book about the history of East Lansing. The working title of the book is “Collegeville Revisited,” and is part of Arcadia Printing’s “Images of America” series.

The series is a pictorial history of different communities in the country.

“I love it here,” Miller said. “Being involved in history all day long, I love being able to relate it to the community.”

The book will give a glimpse of the earliest days of settlement in the area, as well as glimpses at the beginnings of MSU.

In East Lansing’s early days, most of the city revolved around what was originally Michigan Agricultural College, now known as MSU.

Grand River Avenue only was two lanes and there was more green space on both sides of it.

The residents were mostly university faculty and students. Farms dotted the countryside farther out in the city.

To help begin writing the book, Miller is looking for people to donate photographs from their private collections for the project.

The chapters of the book will be divided into the early founders, the diversity of the community and East Lansing’s eventual expansion and development.

Black-and-white photographs of police cars with tail fins and the officers that kept the streets safe and the Vernors advertisement on M.A.C. Avenue that once asked residents to drink the ginger ale are just some of the pictures Miller has so far.

The book, which requires 200 photographs to finish, is slated to be on shelves by next Christmas, she said.

“It is going to focus primarily on pre-1950 but the most difficult to get will be pre-1920 photographs, especially the early builders,” Miller said.

The photographs loaned out for the book will be digitally scanned and then returned to the owners.

“There is going to be a short paragraph explaining who is in the photograph and the significance,” she said.

One person donating some photographs for the book is Jack Thompson.

As vice president of the East Lansing Historical Society and an East Lansing resident for 71 years, Thompson was happy to dig through his private collection.

“I have got pictures of the parade from the 50th anniversary in 1957,” he said.

Some of the other photos that Thompson will donate are going to be of scenes in the city from his childhood and snowstorms that blanketed homes in the past.

The changes that have occurred in East Lansing are some of the interests Thompson can’t wait to see when the book is finished, he said.

“Whitney is a professional, so she knows what she is doing,” Thompson said.

East Lansing City Councilmember Beverly Baten has been working to get Miller scheduled to talk to different groups and forums in East Lansing.

Baten said she hopes people take advantage to get involved in producing the historical look back at the city, she said.

“It takes a while for people to realize what they have is important to others,” she said. “It is worthy to mention that we get that out and people start looking at their archives, I know there are things people haven’t looked through.”