Digitized archives
As part of our bicentennial coverage, we have digitized some of the more historically significant papers in our archives.
News librarian Diane Lamb explains:
This assignment was like going into a candy story that has all your favorites but you are told you can choose only 2 pieces.
Our original agreement with our archiving partner said we would scan 15-20 historical microfilm pages, so I searched for significant events in Greensboro's past, but also included national/international events like world war beginnings and endings. Each of our microfilm rolls includes half a month of newspapers so when the rolls arrived for scanning they scanned the whole roll instead of just one particular day. That is why we have more than the original 20 pages.
Maybe our readers/viewers would like to guess why a particular month/year has been scanned. For example, Jan 1973 is available because I wanted the signing of the Vietnam cease-fire to be one of the available pages. The event took place on January 27, 1973, and the Greensboro Record -- the afternoon paper -- covered the event on page A1 that day. What big event happened in Greensboro in April 1936? Check out the historical archive to find out.
Stay tuned -- we hope to scan more of our historical microfilm in the future.
We have looked into digitizing the total archives. Way too expensive...now.
It is interesting to wander around in these editions, looking at how news judgment, design and advertising styles have changed over the years.