About SmallTownPapers®
SmallTownPapers is a leading solution provider for publishers of America’s 5000 small market newspapers. Working with publishers nationwide, the Seattle-based company digitally preserves current and archive editions and provides searchable online access to the newspapers. Additionally, SmallTownPapers provides millions of news consumers across the country with access to real-time news and information from small town America.
Newspapers in small towns historically confined their archives to bound volumes tucked away in storage. Few were able to afford the luxury of even microfilming their archive editions. Locating an article from the past required the time-consuming activity of traveling to the town and physically searching through often fragile, bound newspaper pages. Additionally, publishers were faced with the loss of the written record of their community history if the single bound volumes were ever damaged or destroyed.
Consumers, researchers, genealogists, historians, government and legal professionals are among those interested in accessing the unique, historical information held in the pages of small town newspapers. In May 2000, SmallTownPapers founder Paul Jeffko launched a program which would provide publishers with the digital technology necessary to preserve and open the door to their historical archives.
SmallTownPapers scans and processes images of the newspaper pages directly from the printed page than uses powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to create a high-quality, online searchable archive. The result is a completely searchable digital newspaper which appears just as the pages were originally printed.
Today, more than 300 newspapers from 46 states can be accessed and searched through SmallTownPapers. The archive, containing editions dating as far back as the 1800s, continues to grow as publishers discover SmallTownPapers in their search for comprehensive digital archive solutions.
In the spring of 2006, the company enhanced its services by launching the first news service dedicated exclusively to the wide distribution of real-time news and information from America’s small towns. SmallTownPapers News Service (STPNS) provides small market newspaper publishers with the ability to safely distribute their local content to millions of news consumers through defined agreements with content aggregation organizations. STPNS is the leading source for small town news offering feeds of news and feature articles, photographs, sports statistics, vital statistics, bid and legal notices.
For more information about the programs and services offered by SmallTownPapers, call 206-938-9073 or email info@smalltownpapers.com.