Digitizing Newspaper Archives

09/03/2026

News organizations are buzzing today about the Justice Department filing a statement supporting AI companies' use of news articles to train LLMs without compensation.

Using creators' work without compensation -- fair use or a copyright violation? Where do you stand?

👉https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/us-govt-sides-openai-york-092349026.html

Check out more on the subject of protecting journalism and archives on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/p/evM2fZAf

09/03/2026

A Pennsylvania genealogical society is launching a community campaign to secure funds to digitize microfilm archives.

It's a great way to engage the community to digitally preserve and provide easier access to its history.

So many of our customers have had great success with this approach, and many discover that after an initial campaign, people start asking what else they can help preserve.

👉Details on their campaign: https://tinyurl.com/mhnsfnd

09/02/2026

Don’t Let Your History Walk Out the Door

Every historical organization has that person.
The person who knows who’s in the photographs.
Who donated a particular collection.
Where the original documents came from.
What those handwritten notes mean.
Which boxes contain what.
What’s historically significant—and what isn’t.
And, sometimes, the seemingly mysterious logic behind how the entire collection is organized.

Much of that knowledge may exist only in their head.

But what happens when that person retires, moves away, changes jobs—or simply isn’t there anymore? An organization can lose an enormous amount of institutional knowledge along with them.

📦 Digital preservation isn’t just about saving documents and photographs. It’s also an opportunity to capture the knowledge surrounding those collections while the people who know it are still there.

👉Sit down with your longtime volunteers, archivists, historians and staff. Ask questions. Record the stories. Document the collections. Identify the people and places. Preserve the context.

Capture what they know before it’s too late.

ArchiveInABox helps historical organizations complete digital preservation projects so collections—and the knowledge that makes them meaningful—can be preserved for the future. https://tinyurl.com/4nrencna

09/01/2026

Digitally preserving archives can be daunting for small market newspapers with limited resources. The McKenzie River Reflections in Oregon was there -- wanting to preserve nearly 50 years of documented community history and understanding the urgency since a local library collection had been lost to fire.

They partnered with SmallTownPapers in 2005 to begin scanning and putting their searchable archive online. Read more about their story - https://tinyurl.com/mussvnuk

You can also visit their archive at mrr.stparchive.com.

McKENZIE BRIDGE: Over four decades of McKenzie River Valley history can be searched from a computer screen through an online archive of McKenzie River Reflections. The archive contains thousands of pages documenting life along the McKenzie since Reflections began publication on August 23, 1978. The....

09/01/2026

Your collection is important. But you can’t digitize history with an empty staff room.

For many historical societies and community heritage organizations, digital preservation is competing with everything else—and there simply aren’t enough people, hours or dollars to get it done.

A SHIFT Collective survey/needs assessment found that 92% of collections were maintained by 10 or fewer people, 79% by 5 people or fewer, and 49% of those working for these organizations were volunteers. Staffing, training and financial resources were identified as major obstacles to digitization.

That’s where ArchiveInABox helps.

Our turnkey, easy-to-use solution is ideal for organizations with limited staff and resources. We guide you through the digitization process and help you tackle projects on your timeline and within your budget—without requiring you to become a digital preservation expert.

Your history deserves to be preserved. You don’t have to do it alone.

📩 Contact ArchiveInABox to learn how to get started. https://archiveinabox.com/why-us.html

08/31/2026

We get a lot of calls from organizations worried about their deteriorating paper archives - it's their digitizing priority - but we always remind organizations that microfilm also needs to be preserved. Even properly stored microfilm degrades over time putting those archives at risk.

If you're considering a digitization project, consider all of your archive content. Film may not be the top priority but don't omit it from your preservation plan.

Contact ArchiveInABox and we can help you determine the best approach forward.

08/30/2026

Are there psychological benefits to engaging with history?

If you've landed on this post, you probably know the answer already but a great article about the benefits of engaging with history crossed our feed - a short and insightful read about how history can reduce stress among other things.

https://drhappy.com.au/2025/10/22/the-psychological-benefits-of-engaging-with-history/

08/29/2026

We love sharing the archives we’ve had the opportunity to work with—and the News Letter Journal from Newcastle, Wyoming has become one of the most popular pages on our Pinterest board! Their online archive goes back to the 1930s.

👉Check it out here: https://pin.it/4EoNpnsAF

Does your archive deserve to be discovered? ArchiveInABox can help make your historical collections accessible and searchable.

📩 Contact us to learn how to get started.

08/28/2026

For those who love old books, newspapers, journals and more, this will make you think. Some companies use old books to train large language models (LLMs), then destroy the books.

History lovers understand that old books are more than bound pages. They're artifacts - they tell a story and once lost, that can't be recreated. We always tell customers that, after archives are digitized, safely store the original if you're able to.

Read the sad story of what's happening with old books. https://www.openculture.com/2026/08/why-ai-companies-are-buying-and-then-destroying-old-books.html

We've long joked about delaying bedtime in order to read the entire internet, but the prospect of actually doing so doesn't sound as appealing as it used to. An ever-growing proportion of text online, we may sense, hasn't been written by humans, but generated by artificial intelligence.

08/27/2026

📜 Want to Win a Heritage Grant for Digital Preservation? Start Here.

Your collection may be priceless—but make sure a grant reviewer understands why digitizing it matters now.

If you're seeking funding to digitize historical newspapers, photographs, manuscripts, maps, records or other cultural heritage materials, here are 3 tips that will make your application stronger:

1️⃣ Make the “WHY NOW?” impossible to miss.
Explain what’s at risk if the project doesn't happen. Are materials fragile? Deteriorating? Difficult to access? At risk of being lost? Connect the urgency to a clear preservation need.

2️⃣ Show who will benefit.
Don't stop at “we'll scan the collection.” Show what happens after digitization. Who will use it? Researchers? Students? Genealogists? Teachers? Your local community? Explain how online access will expand the collection's reach and impact.

3️⃣ Have a realistic plan for the future.
Grant funders want to know their investment will have lasting value. Explain how you'll handle digitization, metadata, storage, preservation, searchability and ongoing online access—and who will be responsible for it.

The strongest applications don't simply ask for money to scan materials. They tell a story about preserving history, expanding access and creating a resource that can serve the community for years to come.