Historical society preserves newspaper, town history

Through its local newspaper digitization project, the Monroe Historical Society (MHS) is not only working to preserve the written history of Monroe, but also to make it easily accessible for anyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet.

Over the years, the historical society has worked to collect an extensive library of Monroe Monitor & Valley News editions, dating all the way back to the first publication in 1899. The digitization project is being accomplished through an organization called Small Town Papers, which provides online access to newspapers from around the country.

The newspapers are carefully inventoried and packed by MHS volunteers, who place 3,000 pages at a time into crates, which are then forwarded to a document-scanning company on the East Coast.

After the scanning process is complete, Small Town Papers uploads the image files to its website, indexing each page by date of the edition and creating a catalog for each year. It uses optical character recognition so that the pages are searchable by keyword or date.

Typically, 3,000 pages amounts to approximately 1,000 separate editions of the newspaper.

The historical society pays for the scanning, plus a fee for the work involved in indexing the files and uploading them to the Small Town Papers' website. The website is maintained by Small Town Papers and can be accessed by anyone. The historical society's goal is to digitize two crates per year; each crate costs approximately $6,000. Each year, MHS works to procure grant funding to help support the project.

An important community service

The Monroe Monitor has served as Monroe's primary newspaper since the publication was founded in 1899. Throughout history, other weekly newspapers were occasionally launched but ended up either closed or merged with the Monitor. The early issues are in delicate condition, but so far, several decades have been digitized and can be viewed for free on the website, including editions from the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s and 1960s.

"I feel that this is the most important service that we provide to the community, and it also preserves the papers,GÇ¥ said MHS Volunteer Chris Bee. "Because the older ones, especially, are pretty fragile.GÇ¥

There are a few decades in the collection that are lacking, Bee explained. MHS hopes to obtain a more comprehensive collection of Monroe Monitor editions from the 1940s, and is working to spread the word that it is actively seeking newspapers from that time period.

"If we had a full set of the "40s [papers], that would be invaluable,GÇ¥ Bee said. "A lot of the older folks around here lived through the war years in Monroe and they would recognize the names of people.GÇ¥

She would also like to find more issues from the 1950s.

"As I recall, there's a lot of clippings that were taken out before they were donated, so it might be nice to have the "50s too,GÇ¥ Bee said. "The "60s look pretty good.GÇ¥

An end in sight

Currently, the plan is to digitize all the editions through 1979. At that point, the newspapers became lengthier, and the additional pages in each edition would drive up the digitization costs dramatically.

"We'll find the resources to get through 1979, but after that, I don't know if we can continue the operation,GÇ¥ Bee said.

The scanned images are sharp and easy-to-read, even in the case of the older editions. Local news items in January 1899 included things like, "Monroe is soon to have a telephone lineGÇ¥ and "Ed McDougal, who has been very ill with typhoid pneumonia, is convalescing.GÇ¥

A one-year subscription cost $1.

The Monroe Historical Society (207 E. Main St.) was founded in 1976, and is located in the original City Hall building. Nowadays, the jail cell and holding tank are used for storage, rather than rowdy miscreants, and the building is filled with Monroe artifacts and photographs documenting the city's history.

In addition to maintaining a physical archive of the Monroe Monitor and working to facilitate a digital one, the historical society collects historical items, documents, photos, manuscripts, high school yearbooks and more.

MHS is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization sustained through preservation grants, fundraising, donations and membership dues.

To learn about membership or to help support the newspaper digitization project, contact MHS at 360-217-7223. For more information, visit www.monroehistoricalsociety.org. -á

To see editions of the Monroe Monitor that have already been digitized, visit mhs.stparchive.com.