in a public library, our materials run the gamut from books from the 1700s about the creation of our country to yearbooks of local high schools that patrons like to peruse for nostalgia’s sake. In addition to our approximately 90,000 reference books, our archives room holds approximately 2,500 linear feet of photographic material, records, and manuscript material. We are constantly seeking new opportunities to expand access to our collections for our patrons, and when the opportunity arose to digitize materials as part of the Community Webs program, I knew what I wanted to digitize first: local neighborhood newspapers of Columbus.
Ohio Columbian, February 24, 1853
We joined the Community Webs program in 2017 to archive accurate cleaned numbers list from frist database important cultural and local government websites of Columbus, Ohio. The catalyst for the project was the belief that we had done a good job of telling the story of Columbus in its first 150 years, but we were missing telling the story of the evolution of the city of the more recent past, as well as failing to record the present. With the object of capturing more recent changes to our city, we focused on archiving our city government website, as well as archiving social service websites, especially those helping new immigrants in our city. Because of the Community Webs program, we were able to take a snapshot of the diverse populations that were making their homes in Columbus, and the medium of web archiving was the only way we were able to tell the stories of these new immigrant communities including the Somalian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and Mexican populations. To further this focus on migration patterns into Columbus, we felt it was important to make our neighborhood newspapers that we had on microfilm accessible because the neighborhood newspapers featured stories and obituaries on immigrant populations who came to Columbus in the mid-19th century and early 20th century.