October 22, 2019

A partnership between the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library and the State Historical Society of Missouri will put more than 60 years of local newspapers online, dating back to 1878. A guest speaker will discuss the project at 1:30 p.m. Thursday during an event at the library...

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A partnership between the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library and the State Historical Society of Missouri will put more than 60 years of local newspapers online, dating back to 1878.

A guest speaker will discuss the project at 1:30 p.m. Thursday during an event at the library.

The library gets weekly, and sometimes daily, requests for digital information of this type, explained Shannon Midyett, assistant library director.

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“They call newspapers the rough draft of history,” said Midyett. “They record so much rich information about our past and really important ties to the past, about how the community developed, or about families.

“A lot of times, the only place to find (this information) is the newspaper at the time. It’s so important to preserve and archive local newspapers.”

The Butler County publications that are being made digital during this phase of the effort will include: the Poplar Bluff Citizen, 1878-1907; the Poplar Bluff Republican, 1915-1944; and the Weekly Citizen Democrat, 1908-1943.

This is part of an ongoing effort to create digital newspaper archives across the state, Midyett said.

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The Missouri Digital Newspaper Project is working to provide historically significant newspapers in digital format for every county in Missouri over the course of several years, according to state officials.

In the second year of the project, the decision was made to focus on 10 counties in the Missouri Ozarks that currently have no newspaper digital content, as well as counties where high interest has been expressed.

Funds of approximately $150,000 have been awarded to the state historical society to help with this part of the project. They come from a Library Services and Technology Act Grant.

The decision was made in Butler County to start with three weekly papers because there is a cost per page to have a special type of microfilm digitized, Midyett said. The project uses original master copies of microfilm to obtain the digital version. These copies have been preserved by the state historical society and local libraries, in many cases.

The Butler County publications are expected to be available online soon, said Midyett, as work has already taken place to digitize the items.

The library also hopes the project will extend to additional years and publications over time.

Workshops on how to use the digital archives may be held at the library at a later date, Midyett said.

When the local digital archive is published, it will be freely available and keyword-searchable from the library website at poplarbluff.org/newspapers.

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