Director Susan Pieper reads an historic account of the Carnegie gift of $40,000 to the citizens of Paulding County.
PAULDING, OH – Paulding County, enterprising, progressive, always forging to the front, has just completed arrangement for another step forward in the onward march of improvement, and civilizing and intellectual advancement. – (Regarding Andrew Carnegie’s $40,000 gift to open a library. Paulding Democrat, Thursday, July 3, 1913.)
The Paulding County Carnegie Library has officially launched its new online newspaper and school year book archive. “We have been working towards this historic archive since the technology was introduced many years ago,” states Susan Pieper, Library Director. “It has been a long-time vision to provide online access to our microfilmed newspaper collection. This project aligns with the Board of Trustee’s Strategic Plan which focuses on five areas, one of which is Discover Your Roots: Genealogy and Local History. The library’s historic school yearbook collection has also been digitized and added to this online resource.” (The library was only able to digitize the yearbooks in the collection. If you have a yearbook that is not listed, please consider donating the yearbook so that the library can have it digitized and added to this archive.)
Newspapers in this digital archive include: Paulding Independent (1859-1863), Plain Dealer (1870-1874), Antwerp Gazette (1871-1878), Paulding Journal (1873-1874), Paulding Democrat (1874-1949), Paulding County Gazette (1878-1888), Payne Star (1884-1885), Paulding County Republican (1888-1949), Payne Reflector (1895-1903), Antwerp Bee (1896-1913), North Western Ohio Independent News (1908-1910), The Independent News (1913-1915), Paulding Republican (1915-1920), Paulding Progress (1949-2016), Payne Reflector and Press Review (1903-1967), Antwerp Argus (1883-1893), Antwerp Bee Argus (1914-1921), Oakwood News (1915-1982), Grover Hill News (1947-1972).
School yearbooks included in the archive: Paulding High School Yearbook (1916-2008), Antwerp High School Yearbook (1937-2014), Wayne Trace High School Yearbook (1972-2003), Blue Creek High School Yearbook (1953-1971), Grover Hill High School Yearbook (1945-1969), Oakwood High School Yearbook (1928-1971), Haviland-Scott Yearbook (1940-1952), Paulding Middle School Yearbook (1974-1977), Paulding Elementary Yearbook (1974), St. Johns the Baptist Catholic School (2001-2008), Wayne Trace Junior High School (1975-1977), Emerald Center School Yearbook (1954), Melinda Krick, editor of The Paulding Progress shared, “I’ve used it several times already, and it’s truly amazing what you can find. I’ve searched some personal family history/genealogy items as well as information for work. It’s helpful that there’s different ways to narrow a search, such as choosing specific newspapers or choosing a particular decade. The matches by decade can be interesting because you can see the time frame where your search item has the most “hits.” So many times we’ve tried to research something, and it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack unless you had a date to go by. This makes research so much easier and productive. I have the site bookmarked on my computer!”
Anyone can access this free archive from their home computer or mobile device at paulding.advantage-preservation.com or click on the Ohio Newspaper Archive link from the library’s homepage at www.pauldingcountylibrary.org. There is also a computer with a large, vertical screen in the genealogy department of the main historic Carnegie library. This digital resource utilizes Optical Character Resolution (OCR) software which allows keyword or phrase searching. Patrons can search for people, places or events by simply typing their keyword in the search box at the top of the page. The next page will show a number of results which may or may not be the results desired. At this second page, researchers can narrow their search by choosing the newspaper or school yearbook and also narrow by decade and year.
“One interesting newspaper story I found was from The Independent News, published in Oakwood, Ohio on Thursday, April 3, 1913. Almost every article and every advertisement references the great flood, including a list of donors to the Oakwood Flood Fund,” shared Pieper. “The April 10th issue of that paper shares some photographs of “flood views” in Oakwood and Melrose.”
“It is easy to get lost browsing through the archives,” states Ali McCauley, Assistant Director and Head of Adult Services. “I can get lost looking at old ads, community events, crime stories and more.”
Classes Offered: Two classes have been scheduled to demonstrate and learn “hands-on” how to use the library’s digital archive. On Saturday, May 5th, a class will be held in the main library meeting room from 10:30 a.m. until noon. Attendees will be able to practice searching in the library laptop classroom. A second class is scheduled for Thursday, May 10th from 6:40 p.m. until 7:45 p.m. Space is limited, so preregistration is required. Call 419-399-2032 to secure a spot. Guests may share a computer with a friend or another class participant so everyone has a chance to explore this invaluable resource.
Donations are appreciated to help underwrite the cost of this important resource. The Paulding County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogy Society has already made a generous donation of $1,000 to help with the costs.
The Paulding County Carnegie Library was the first “county” library in the United States funded by Andrew Carnegie. The library opened in 1916 and celebrated its centennial in 2016. Follow library activities on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PauldingCountyLibrary/.
