Soon history buffs and genealogists will have a new research tool. Instead of scrolling through rolls of microfilm, historical researchers will soon be able to access Candor Free Library’s newspaper archive online. That's because the South Central Regional Library Council (SCRLC) awarded a $5005 Technology and Digitization Grant to the Candor Library to cover costs of digitizing town and county newspapers currently archived on microfilm. The goal is to digitize some 32,300 pages from newspapers including the Candor Courier (1899-1966), the Owego Gazette (1966-1967), and the Tioga County Courier Gazette (1967-1970).
The scanning will be outsourced to the Northern New York Library Network (NNYLN). Once put into digital format, the newspapers will be added to New York State Historic Newspapers and made freely available to the public at their website nyshistoricnewspapers.org. Head on over and check it out; you can search old papers for names, places, and dates.
SCRLC’s Technology and Digitization Grants are funded as part of the Regional Bibliographic Data Bases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program.