Newspaper Digital Preservation Scores Big with Community Partnership

Newspapers are engaging local historical stakeholders to help ensure their invaluable archives are digitized and made online accessible and searchable preserving local history for future generations. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) September 18, 2019 - SmallTownPapers, Inc. is pleased to announce it has completed the digitization of The Issaquah Press and its predecessor The Issaquah Independent giving the community online access to the documented history dating back to the newspaper's founding nearly 120 years ago in this small town 30 miles outside of Seattle.

The Issaquah Press began digitizing its archives with SmallTownPapers 14 years ago but was able to only scan a representative portion from each decade. Fast forward a dozen years when SmallTownPapers re-engaged the newspaper along with the local historical society with a goal of completing the project. The nonprofit Issaquah History Museums was as eager as the newspaper to have archives digitally preserved and, more importantly, made easy to access and search online, so they included scanning in their capital campaign.

"We knew the community had strong feelings about the Issaquah Press and would support digitizing," explained Museum Director Erica Maniez. "Anyone who lived here ended up in The Issaquah Press at some point in time."

And that's what happened. It cleared the way for the Museums to engage the company's scanning and hosting expertise. Today, all available physical copies have been digitized and can be searched online for free at http://ihm.stparchive.com.

Maniez says the timing is perfect since a lot of community organizations were formed in the 1970s when Issaquah began to really expand. Those groups are now about to celebrate their 50th anniversaries and can easily find articles and photos about their own history.

ArchiveInABox® from SmallTownPapers is widely recognized as the leading provider of newspaper archiving services and can help publishers identify community partners eager to participate. Whether in bound volumes, loose papers, or microfilm -- we'll convert your archive so it can be easily accessed and searched by the public online.

Let ArchiveInABox show you how community partnerships are being used to complete archive digitization projects across North America.

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