Grant Kaestner, Account Manager at Advantage Preservation, recently received a rewarding phone call from one of our library partners in Maine. Representatives from the Fort Fairfield Public Library reached out to him to share their appreciation for our partnership approach and its positive impact on communities involved. “We love having our digital archives available and […]
Read All About Advantage Archives
At Advantage Archives we work hard to build strong, community-based partnerships to provide free online access to local history, making it discoverable and easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time, on any device. This access allows communities to understand and connect to their past in a meaningful way.
Through these partnerships, we provide the community the means to explore, discover, learn from, connect with, and share the stories of the people, places, and events that shaped their community.
The Community History Archives are intended to serve as a “portal to the past”, allowing local primary source documents to give an accounting of history as told by the individuals that witnessed it.
Advantage Spotlight: Ann Tice
Page 1 of The Klemme Times, published in Klemme, Iowa on Thursday, October 26th, 1899 Ann Tice is an avid genealogist currently living near Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann was introduced to Advantage Preservation by a librarian and has since helped fund the digitization of Clear Lake (IA), Klemme (IA), and Red Wing (MN) newspapers. Ann […]
Discover Your Rural Roots! Carol Richey looks at Advantage Preservation and their growing collection of digitized small town and rural newspapers
Researching your rural ancestors in newspaper collections is becoming much easier and more convenient. Thanks to the work of Advantage Preservation, a division of Advantage Archives based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, more than 55 million historical newspaper pages in 39 states are now available online through their digitization projects. Exploring the lives of your rural […]
Advantage On The Road: Massachusetts
Advantage Preservation: Visiting With Our Friends In Massachusetts Pictured above: Grant Kaestner (left), & Jeffrey Kiley (right), of Advantage Preservation on their visit to the Newburyport Public Library in Newburyport MA, on October 31st, 2018. Last week Grant & I had the opportunity to spend some time visiting a few of our library partners in […]
Historical Newspaper Research
There is a lot to learn from old newspapers if you know what you are looking for. Before the advent of the Internet, it was newspapers that were relied on most for information. Now, many old newspapers have been digitized and made available online as a resource for historians, genealogists and writers among others. With […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: Microfilm & OCR
The Paper Problem:With the newfound ability to assemble content and produce pages quickly and efficiently, existing papers increased their circulation numbers substantially. The demand for the paper on which to print the news inevitably grew as well. This created a need to use a less expensive paper stock to match the increased production rates. This […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The Next Era
Despite achieving the means to print in mass quantities, the publishing industry’s productivity was largely constrained by the need to set type by hand. By 1880, the Linotype Printing machine was invented. The machine used a keyboard, which allowed an entire line of type to be laid at once. The requisite time and effort to […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The History of Printing
Until the first part of the 19th century, the composition and typesetting were accomplished by painstakingly placing each individual letter into a “galley” by hand. The galleys were then placed into a “chase” that was the size of the final page. Since each letter was placed individually, there was no method for standardization or uniformity.If […]
Making Old Newspapers Searchable: The Beginning
The newspaper industry in the United States has evolved considerably over the last 300 years. Each development in the typesetting methods, printing process, and paper stock created unique challenges in adapting the digital image of old newspapers to a searchable format. Digitization Of Historical Newspapers & OCR (Optical Character Recognition) “What history buffs want is […]
12 Million Pages of Newspapers to be Preserved: State Historical Society of Iowa and Advantage Archives to microfilm and digitize state’s collection of newspapers
DES MOINES – The process to save the first draft of Iowa history just got a lot smoother. The State Historical Society of Iowa today unveiled a sweeping new plan to preserve more than 12 million pages of newspapers in its collection, giving Iowans greater access to more than 300 titles dating to the state’s […]
