Officials with Stratford-Perth Archives say their new historical newspaper database has proved popular with the public, recording more than 53,000 visits in the nearly three months it’s been online.

The archive launched in mid-September, allowing amateur and professional historians, and curious residents a way to look at old local newspapers dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The project kicked off in 2022, spearheaded by Jennifer Georgiou, an assistant archivist at the archives. For the last three years, she and two summer students have been working to scan the archives’ microfilm and physical newspaper collection at a rate of about 12,000 to 28,000 pages each summer.

“I find now that a lot of researchers want a Google-esque database when looking for research,” Georgiou said this week. “The numbers show that this has been a really great tool for researchers.”

Users from as far away as New Zealand and Norway have looked at the database, said Betty Jo Belton, manager of archives services at Stratford-Perth Archives.

“We have heard from people who found information about family members just by searching the surname across a number of papers.”

An advertisement for Milverton, Ont., merchant T.P. Roe, printed in the Nov. 13, 1913 edition of the Milverton Sun, makes a pitch to readers for “up-to-date” boots heading into the winter season. (Stratford-Perth Archives)

The scanned newspapers have been uploaded to a website operated by the non-profit OurDigitalWorld, which hosts digital artifacts for various Ontario libraries and archives.

You can read more at: https://tinyurl.com/mpwdvedf.