A press release in August from the Tama County Historical Society announced reception of a grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa for “microfilm preservation of historic newspapers” in Tama County and also the former Reinbeck Courier. As worded, I’m not sure if it includes digitization of said microfilm, but either way, it’s important for archives!
In the past couple of months, online archives of the Traer Star-Clipper have advanced slightly, to include 1975 and 1976 and six weeks of 1977. This addition is small, but pivotal, and not just for Bicentennial coverage. It includes the switch to offset printing in February 1975, which ended the use of the press in the back of the Star-Clipper offices that dated back to 1953. Also, the 1976 newspapers are photographs of news pages, instead of microfilm, which means that the file sizes are much bigger but photos are readable and the presentation is cleaner. The combination of these two changes leads to seeing online reproductions with many commonalities with what subscribers saw through about the end of the 20th century.
Ideally, hopefully, digitization of newspapers from the 21st century will switch to using the original PDFs sent electronically to the press. This eliminates all fold marks, presents news photographs and ads in full color, and also has a smaller file size than photographed pages. In Tama County’s case, that would require cooperation from the papers’ owner in West Virginia.
I see that Pocahontas County’s thick 1981 history book is available through the Laurens library’s website (dated 1901 in search). Could we get the 1987 Tama County history book online too? Just a thought.