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State Historical Society Releases Plan to Archive More than 12 Million Pages of Newspaper

Lee Wright
/
Flickr

The State Historical Society of Iowa is unveiling a plan to preserve more than 12 million pages of newspapers printed around the state dating back to the 1830’s. During this hour of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe talks with state archivist Tony Jahn. 

Jahn says the pages will be archived on microfilm, and then they will be digitized with hopes that the pages will be easily "findable" for anyone wanting to do research.

"In our collection we have about 24 million pages that have been preserved. There’s an additional 12 million pages that still need preservation attention, so this project is focusing on addressing those pages and microfilming them from the newspaper that is very fragile," says Jahn.

"The one thing that has been iron clad and steadfast through this process is that we are really passionate that newspapers are the first cut of history. This may be the only time a topic is written about. It may be the first time something is written about."

Lindsey Moon is IPR's Senior Digital Producer
Charity Nebbe is the host of IPR's Talk of Iowa