Library Initiates Historic Newspaper Digitization

FAIRFIELD — This month, the Fairfield Public Library and the Carnegie Historical Museum began an initiative to digitize Jefferson County’s oldest newspaper records.

The library already prepares to shipped the first sixty reels of microfilm to Cedar Rapids for scanning and image enhancement with the implementation of this initiative.

According to Schmidt Mickunas, these first Images from the reels containing the oldest newspapers will be available online in six to nine months

As far as Library Director Al Schmidt Mickunas knows, the library holds the only records of the microfilm reels of the county’s newspapers held by the public library such as the Iowa Sentinel, dating back to 1847, and the Lockridge Herald.

In March of this year, the Fairfield Public Library Board of Trustees requested special funding from the library’s Foundation to help kick-start this long overdue project.

“Last year when I attended the Iowa Library Association’s annual conference in Coralville, my colleague Kalona Public Library Director Trevor Sherping recommended Advantage Archives based out of Cedar Rapids for microfilm digitization,” recalls Schmidt Mickunas. “I was surprised when I spoke to Advantage’s team there and saw that Jefferson County was one of the few areas in Iowa not working with Advantage.”

When an Advantage representative visited Fairfield’s library in August of 2022, they informed Schmidt Mickunas that the vinegar-like smell of acetic acid indicated the beginning stages of deterioration in the microfilm.

“This history will be lost if we don’t act swiftly,” Schmidt Mickunas said. “It was then I decided I needed to share the seriousness of the situation with other historical organizations in town who could help with funds to preserve our community’s history.”

The Director spoke about the project to the FPL Library Board as well as the Museum Board and the Carnegie Museum Board and found a strong advocate for the digitization in Carnegie Museum Assistant Director and Curator Jake Schmidt.

“Jake showed me the bound newspapers at the museum that are likely the source material for the microfilm but the bound books only go back to the 1920s,” Director Schmidt Mickunas stated. “It’s possible that the older books became too delicate or were damaged beyond the point of preservation.”

The Carnegie Museum pledged to contribute funds toward the cost of the digitization on an annual basis.

The project, which Advantage Archives will complete, entails scanning high-resolution images from the 396 reels of the library’s microfilm, enhancing the images, and converting them into PDFs, and uploading them to a new fully searchable “Digital Archives of Jefferson County” website which all can freely access.

Even with such generous partnerships from Carnegie Museum and the FPL Foundation, the library will require more community partners to champion the cause in order to meet the total price tag of $63,392.

For now, they can pay for this incrementally with the FPL Foundation’s contribution of 15% toward the total cost.

“Many people felt that this project should be paid for with funding from the county as was seen with Wapello County’s Supervisors paying for Ottumwa’s newspaper digitization,” Schmidt Mickunas said. “However, with some recent cuts to funding in Fairfield from the county, this prospect seems unlikely.”

The library hopes that community members in Fairfield and the surrounding communities will take an interested in supporting this initiative and make contributions to the library for the project.