Historic Newspaper Digitization in Essex County
With Arthur Rhyno, Chair of OurDigitalWorld and Systems Librarian at the University of Windsor
Essex County has a rich newspaper history and has seen many newspaper titles appear and disappear. In 2007, a provincially funded project called Knowledge Ontario created an initiative to support local newspaper digitization and the results were made available in a web-based system called INK. INK featured dozens of Essex County titles as well as newspapers from other counties. The funding for Knowledge Ontario was eliminated in 2013, and INK became a volunteer project with extensive periods of downtime and unavailability. Recently, a revamped version of INK called INK2 was launched using a system from the University of Denver with extensive contributions from Archives & Special Collections at the University of Windsor, as well as with the help of many other people and organizations. Newspaper digitization is considered one of the most difficult and expensive types of digital conversion work, and this presentation will demonstrate how the incredible value of historic newspapers can be realized with a modest budget and enthusiastic supporters.