“Newspaper publishers across the country expressed interest in the simple yet powerful SmallTownPapers system created for moving printed archives from small town newspapers to digital format providing access to newspapers that previously had been inaccessible to anyone outside the newspaper office,” said Paul Jeffko, president and founder of SmallTownPapers. “With ArchiveInABox, we are able to offer that system to a new group of customers who are searching for an easy and cost-effective way to digitize, access, search, distribute and market their collection of bound book archives.”

With ArchiveInABox, a newspaper publisher simply places their bound book archives in a provided military grade shipping box. SmallTownPapers handles everything for the publisher including shipping, logistics, scanning, post-processing, distribution and marketing. The archive books are scanned intact and safely returned to the publisher. Once the scanning process has been completed, post-processing software including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to create fully-searchable digital images of the newspaper pages which are uploaded to the appropriate internet servers. The online newspaper pages appear exactly as they were printed and a search will locate and highlight keywords appearing in articles, photograph captions and advertisements.

“This is an absolutely necessary extension of our newspaper,” said Tim Robinson of Robinson Newspapers in Seattle which is in the process of working with SmallTownPapers to digitize a portion of its archives dating back more than 80 years. “We embraced this concept because it serves a wide audience of interest.”

For Robinson Newspapers, the digitizing project means peace of mind knowing the bound archives can remain in storage - safe and intact. The publishers know that now there are few reasons anyone will ever need to thumb through the delicate, aging pages of the bound books. Instead, newspaper reporters, researchers, genealogists and others needing information about their community’s history have immediate access to a high-quality, easy-to-search, online version of the newspaper.

Publishers, including Robinson Newspapers, appreciate the careful handling of their bound volume archives. For the scanning of the delicate books, SmallTownPapers contracts with Maryland-based Crowley Micrographics which is known for its experience, expertise and high quality standards in the “non-destructive” scanning of old and fragile bound books and large format materials such as newspapers. The company uses specialized, high-resolution, overhead scanners created by Zeutschel, a global leader in high performance scan systems.

Currently, SmallTownPapers has produced 300,000 pages of newspaper archives dating back to the 1800s.

About SmallTownPapers SmallTownPapers is an online gateway to newspapers from small town America - past and present. Working with publishers from across the country, the company digitally scans current and archived newspapers and then provides online access. Through the SmallTownPapers website, the newspaper archives can be searched by keyword or phrase and viewed as originally printed. SmallTownPapers, Inc. is based in Seattle, WA. For more information visit www.smalltownpapers.com.