ROOTS & BRANCHES

Let no one think that digitization of historical newspapers is in any way abating.

And leave it for folks in the Penn State area to be doing a project that has some cutting-edge aspects to it.

The hot news about old news is that L. Suzanne Kellerman of Penn State Libraries has teamed up with the Centre County Genealogical Society to digitize issues from 1872 to 1923 of the historical Democratic Watchman, published in Bellefonte, the county seat of Centre County.

Kellerman has been a key player in newspaper preservation efforts for several decades, beginning as a cataloguer in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project (state affiliate of the U.S. Newspaper Program that microfilmed many newspapers) and eventually becoming the Judith O. Sieg Chair for Preservation and head of preservation, conservation and digitization for Penn State Libraries.

Richard Wade of Centre County Genealogical reports that the years 1855 to 1871 were already scanned some years ago as part of Penn State’s “Civil War Era Newspaper Project.”

“We are starting with 1900-1917, with most years being scanned from second-generation microfilm, but the bookend years will be scanned directly from paper copies held by Penn State as an experiment (these have lots of small-print lists, since 1900 is the county centennial year and 1917 has the WW I draft lists),” Wade wrote.

“Scanning will be higher resolution and in grayscale (color for the paper originals), unlike the old 200 dpi B/W scans for the Civil War era newspaper project. That, plus using improved OCR engines, should result in much better search results,” he noted.

Images and OCR products will be hosted at the URL, panewsarchive.psu.edu, for free access anywhere.

Wade wrote that “People with any interest in Centre or surrounding counties will be interested in this project, for all the usual reasons, including legal advertising (jury and tax lists, estates, Sheriff’s sales, etc.), for political and society news, for business and infrastructure news (trolleys, roads, telephone service), but especially for the rich “gossip” columns that relate the comings and goings, trials and tribulations, of folks by their locality within the county.”

Of the various Centre County papers, the Watchman had the most comprehensive coverage and the longest run in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A rough estimate for the total project cost is $20,000, to be refined as time goes on, according to Wade.

The Centre County society has made an initial donation of $10,000 and has set aside an additional $6,000 as matching funds—for every dollar contributed, the society will throw in two more dollars (up to the $6,000 limit).

Donations to the project can be by PayPal or check, see CentreCountyGenealogy.org for details.  “We aim to complete this project during calendar year 2019, so prompt donations in any amount are most appreciated,” Wade wrote.