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Washington Evening Journal
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Fairfield library’s newspaper archives being uploaded to internet
FAIRFIELD — The Fairfield Public Library is undertaking a project to upload all newspapers in Jefferson County’s history so that they will be searchable online.
The ambitious project involves digitizing newspapers from as long ago as 1847, and covers newspapers such as The Fairfield Ledger as well as newspapers that have not published for decades such as The Fairfield Tribune, The Lockridge Times and The Batavia News.
The library is relying on the services of Advantage Archives in Cedar Rapids, which scans microfilm and uploads the scan to the internet. It converts the scan into a searchable document, so that a person doing research on a subject can enter certain keywords and discover all instances where those words appear in a newspaper article going back more than 150 years.
Fairfield Public Library Director Alecs Schmidt Mickunas said that this service will be free, and can be accessed through the library’s website under the “Digital Library” tab and then clicking on “Electronic Resources.”
The project is already underway, and about 15 percent of the library’s microfilm collection has been uploaded to the website. The initial round of funding came from a $10,000 gift from the Fairfield Public Library Foundation. Schmidt Mickunas said the library will need to raise $53,000 to upload its entire microfilm collection, which it hopes to do gradually over the next five years as donations or grants come in.
Thus far, more than 35,000 pages of the county’s newspapers have been uploaded to the website. The Fairfield Ledger has been uploaded from 1853 through 1908, while The Fairfield Tribune has been uploaded from 1879-1913, The Lockridge Times from 1916-1967, and The Batavia News from 1916-1936.
Schmidt Mickunas said that he met representatives from Advantage Archives during a library conference last fall. He learned that his friend and classmate from the University of Iowa, Trevor Sherping, who directs the Kalona Public Library, had already been using Advantage Archives so that its microfilm collection was already digitized. As Schmidt Mickunas began to explore the issue more, he realized that Fairfield was one of the few library’s in Southeast Iowa that had not digitized its microfilm collection.
“Jefferson County’s newspapers have never been digitized, so they could be lost forever,” Schmidt Mickunas said. “We are saving the history of Jefferson County by doing this.”
Schmidt Mickunas said the library started uploading its oldest microfilms first because some of them were starting to decompose.
“All of them are still usable, but I’d say the quality of the scan would have been better if this process had been started earlier,” Schmidt Mickunas said. “I don’t think there’s time to wait much longer.”
Schmidt Mickunas said he hopes this service will be useful to people doing genealogy research, or to history buffs who want to look up information from decades ago. He said it could be used by researchers such as Dick DeAngelis, who is producing an eight-part documentary series called the Fairfield History Series. He’s finishing one on Parsons College, which will be shown this fall, and his next film will be on the history of Maharishi International University.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
