GRANITE CITY – The Granite City Press-Record Online Archives are available free-of-charge to the public through the Six Mile Regional Library District (SMRLD), starting with the decade of the 1960s. Because of the behind the scenes work that has to be done to ensure their readability, the newspapers will be uploaded one decade at a time. In a few weeks, SMRLD will be ready to upload the 1970s.
All issues published from January 4, 1960, through December 31, 1969, can now be accessed at www.smrld.org/press-record/. SMRLD IT & Facilities Manager Tallin Curran supervised this project. He remarked, “Many of these issues from the 1960s have as many as 40 or 50 pages per issue. A few have even more. It’s a great mix of local news and advertisements from local businesses that are gone but not forgotten, such as Tri-City Grocery, Carp’s, the Washington Theater, Fleishman’s, and many, many more.”
The Granite City Press-Record was first published on April 22, 1903, as the Granite City Press. It ceased publication with the December 26, 2012, issue as the Press-Record. For many years, the Granite City Press-Record was well-regarded as the place to find out what was happening through the announcements, news, and human-interest stories about the people and places in Granite City, Pontoon Beach, Mitchell, Madison, and Venice, Illinois.
This multi-year project, undertaken by the Six Mile Regional Library District, actually began in 2012, when copyright permission was granted to the Library by Lee Enterprises to digitize and make the newspapers available online. Unfortunately, the costs for digitizing such a large project were prohibitive at that time. The real work began in 2019, when SMRLD signed an agreement with American Digital Memories (ADM) in Oklahoma to have over 369 reels of microfilm scanned and converted into electronic files.
After the many months of converting the microfilm reels into readable files was completed by ADM, it was time for Library staff to begin the arduous job of sifting through the files checking for readability. Files are checked and re-checked for clarity; when adjustments are needed the Library requests corrections from ADM. It generally takes Library staff approximately forty hours from receipt of the mega-files until a full decade is uploaded and ready to read online
Executive Director Tina Hubert said, “It’s been a dream of ours to make the Granite City Press-Record Online Archives available and we are thrilled that dream is finally reality. Keep watching for other decades to be uploaded in the future by liking or following the SMRLD Facebook page.”
The SMRLD Facebook can be found at https://www.facebook.com/smrld.org/
The Granite City Press-Record Online Archives can be found at https://www.smrld.org/press-record/
