The Glengarry County Archives has digitized The Glengarry News from 1892 to 1960, but they are not searchable. Image: Glengarry County Archives.
It’s not often a city council is pitched an idea to digitize local newspapers, but that’s what happened last week at the United Counties of Stormont Dundas and Glengarry (SDG) council meeting in Eastern Ontario.
Former North Dundas mayor Eric Duncan spoke on behalf of three organizations, Glengarry County Archives, the Lost Villages Museum, and the Dundas County Archives, to request funding for a digital archive of several decades of pages from about eight of the region’s community newspapers.
They are asking SDG to put up between $150,000 and $200,000 for the project from the 2019 budget and to have county staff members issue a request for proposals from private companies willing to do the digitization.
The groups envision a publicly available and searchable database of the Glengarry News, Winchester Press, Chesterville Record, Morrisburg Leader, Iroquois Chieftan, Morrisburg Banner, St. Lawrence News, and Seaway Breeze newspapers. The archive would be updated annually.
Newspapers from the Glengarry News have already been scanned up to 1960 by the Glengarry County Archives but the documents are not searchable. They can only be browsed.
Mr. Duncan told council he had agreements with the newspapers for the collections to be donated or loaned to the archives.
In addition to newspapers from Dundas and Glengarry Counties, the Lost Villages’ extensive photo collection would be digitized and made available to the public.
The councillors appeared supportive at the meeting.
The counties will consider the proposal for funding during the budget deliberations in February and March. If approved, the group hopes to issue a request-for-proposal through the counties in March. Work would ideally begin in May.
Read more in the Cornwall Standard Freeholder.
