If you are looking for the record of something that has happened in Gloucester since the 1930s, there is a good chance that Frances Foster Sterling can find it for you.

Sterling began keeping records in 1938, when her aunt gave her a scrapbook for her 12th birthday. She started clipping news items from local papers, posting her greeting cards, and gluing in notes received from family and friends.

And unlike most scrapbookers, she has kept up the habit. She has 15 complete books of events and is working on number 16, which includes items about the April 16, 2011 tornado, the August earthquake, and Hurricane Irene a week later, and with the latest entries—an engagement and an obituary—glued in just a week or so ago.

In addition to these week-by-week logs, Sterling has put aside items of special interest in other books. There is a book about mills, for which she has a special love; one on Gloucester County history, another on Mathews; and a book of artists and other in...