Villa Rica officials plan to document the city’s history by publishing a book of photographs, but they need the public’s help — again — to accomplish this goal.

The city signed a contract two years ago with Arcadia Publishing to complete a photo history book of the city as part of the “Images Across America” series and sought out photos from the public at that time. However, since then the person in charge of the project for the city no longer works there and the photos that had been submitted have either gone missing or were digitized to a CD at the wrong resolution.

To complicate matters, the city’s deadline to have chapter summaries submitted and many of the photos is fast approaching.

“I want any pictures that anyone has of anything historical that is more than 50 years old that might have significance to the city’s history,” said Community Development Director Janet Hyde, who has been put in charge of salvaging the project.

Hyde added that she does have some photos, but many more are needed to meet the requirements of the book. Of the digitized photos that were already sent to the publisher, only a few color photographs of the 1957 Berry’s Pharmacy explosion and a few black and white photos of other historic sites were of the proper resolution.

According to the city’s contract with Arcadia, the book will contain 128 pages of between 180 and 240 images, including photographs, postcards and other incidental items such as maps, ideograms, drawings and other materials that document the city’s history. Each image must also include a description of the historic significance of the photo depicted.

The city has already received one extension on the project from the publisher, but it runs out in December and will likely not be extended again.

“We’ve got to get these pictures in as soon as possible because I’ve got to have everything in by December,” Hyde said. “They’ve only got a few that they can use at this point.”

Anyone who would like to submit photos is asked to drop them off at City Hall or mail them to 571 West Bankhead Highway, Villa Rica, Ga. 30180 in care of Janet Hyde with a description of what’s in the photo and the photographer’s name so that proper credit can be given. It is preferred the photos be hard copies on photo paper and not digitized versions so they can be scanned to the proper resolution.

Arcadia will publish the book at no charge to the city and all copies sold will garner the city a royalty of 8 percent of the actual net sales, which will likely be used for historic preservation projects in the city.