Advantage Archives Is Partnering With Iowa Communities To Provide Free Access To Local History
We forge long-lasting partnerships with community leaders across the state to preserve and digitize Iowa’s rich history in order to make it discoverable and easily accessible to anyone from anywhere.
Only through these strong partnerships have we been able to provide free access to local history, allowing Iowa communities to understand and connect to their past in a meaningful way. Through preservation microfilming, we ensure your past has a future and, with digitization, make it easily accessible in the present.
Pick a time and day that work for you, and we will set up a telephone or video meeting to discuss how Advantage can help you and your community.
Making Iowa History Accessible to Anyone from Anywhere
We work on digitizing Iowa’s rich history, one community at a time. Thanks to strong partnerships with communities across the state, Iowa’s primary source materials are more discoverable and easily accessible. Free online digital access allows Iowans to understand and connect to their past in a meaningful way.
Digitization Of Historical Iowa Documents
Printed, handwritten, and even drawn content contained in the documents in communities across the state of Iowa provides invaluable insight into the people, places, and events, that shaped Iowa.
Once digitized, these Iowa records, writings, and documents can be made easily accessible in a Community History Archive or provided to you to be used in your institution’s existing access solution.
Digitization Of Iowa’s Newspapers Microfilm
Iowans that visit your institution will have a powerful tool that can save time by searching through your community’s history by name, date range, keywords, publication, or location…and not limited to a reel at a time or if a microfilm reader is occupied (or operational!).
Advantage Archives also offers a user-friendly digital solution to research Iowa history via our Community History Archives hosted solution.
Iowa’s Community History Archives
Connect Iowa’s communities to their past with a Community History Archive, an easy-to-use yet powerful digital search platform. Advantage Archives hosts these “portals to the past” at no cost to Iowa institutions, so you, in turn, can offer free access to your community.
These free-to-use digital archives provide practical access to Iowa’s local primary resources and are available to anyone, at any time, on any device, for free!
Digitization Of Iowa’s Photographic Originals
Digitization ensures that the photographs, negatives, or slides that captured Iowa’s history can be viewed anytime, anywhere, from any device. This allows us to see with our own eyes the people, places, and events from long ago that shaped Iowa.
Digitized photographic materials enable Iowans to share those moments with others, while the original copy can be properly stored to preserve it and minimize handling.
Digitization Of Iowa’s Books And Bound Volumes
Books, journals, bound newspaper volumes, ledgers, scrapbooks, and other collated paper documents contain the accounts of the events, people, and places that shaped your community, the state of Iowa, and the nation.
Digitizing these pages from Iowa’s past minimizes the handling of the original materials and ensures that this important local history is never lost to fading, torn pages, broken bindings, or contaminants!
Digitization Of Yearbooks And Annuals From Iowa
Iowa’s yearbooks and annuals capture a snapshot in time, providing insight into the people of Iowa and the times in which they lived. Alumni, genealogists, or anyone that wants to look back on their “glory days” will have free access to those pages of Iowa’s past.
Advantage Archives provides non-destructive scanning solutions and online digital access to these valuable records of the history of Iowa.
Digitization Of Iowa’s Maps, Land Records, And Atlases
Converting Iowa’s maps, state and county atlases, land records, plats, plans, prints, and large format documents to a portable and easily searchable digital format will save space, shorten research time, and make the content widely accessible.
Digitization limits the need to handle the original. These historical Iowa documents are often so large and on such thin paper that they are at risk each time they are unfolded.
Preservation Microfilming To Archive Iowa’s Past
We believe that the preservation of Iowa’s history is a shared responsibility. We are proud to partner with like-minded individuals across the state to preserve the words printed in Iowa’s newspapers & documents.
Silver halide 35MM archival microfilm is stable and durable, with a life expectancy of over 500 years under the proper storage and handling conditions. The only way to preserve Iowa’s past, giving it a future.
Imaging Services For Iowa Industries And Government
The document imaging services from the Information Management Solutions team rise above the level of a typical “service bureau.” We approach each scanning, indexing, or conversion project from the perspective of a partner with a mutually shared goal.
No other “scanning company” in Iowa or large national records management business can compete with our approach or our pride in the partnerships we develop.
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It!
See what some of our partners from around Iowa have to say about their relationship with Advantage Archives, their Community History Archive, or the importance of making Iowa’s history more accessible.
Nevada Public Library in Iowa
We receive many requests that come to the library from people who are searching for information, and without exact newspaper dates, it can be difficult to find what they are looking for. By digitizing the collection — It will have a keyword search, so people should have a much easier time finding all kinds of old stories, obituaries, ads, and whatever else they might be searching for that ran on the pages of the newspaper through the years.
The Scranton Journal in Iowa
This project has been on my personal bucket list for years. The bound copies dating back to the 1880s are so fragile, they were literally falling apart and we couldn’t allow anyone to use them. Now with the newspapers searchable online, our history is preserved in a digital format that won’t crumble or be lost.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa
Advantage’s approach is scalable as a comprehensive project not only for Iowa, but for any community across the country. We’re appreciative of Advantage’s approach and understanding for the value of the archive and their willingness to work as true partners.
Cedar Rapids Public Library in Iowa
In the past, we would have been totally reliant on an outside vendor to provide access to this important historical archive. This allows us to make these items available through our website to anyone who needs them at no additional future cost.
Iowa City Public Library in Iowa
Our Community History Archive has opened a window to things. You can uncover so much more, and so much more efficiently. Historic research is hard, going through newspaper after newspaper on a microfilm machine — your eyes miss things. This archive is going to help immensely.
Jefferson Public Library in Iowa
I know there is always more work to do, and more mountains to climb, but I wanted to take a few minutes to show my gratitude, both as a librarian, and as a family historian. You guys all great! And thank you, also, for the shout out to libraries and all the other funding resources we work with to be able to digitize our newspapers and provide this wonderful resource for our communities. Next time I have an opportunity to visit with all the local organizations that helped make our project possible, I will share this article and show them how many archives have been preserved thanks to working with Advantage. We’re so pleased to be part of a true success story!
Churdan Public Library in Iowa
We think this new website is so easy to use, and our county school teachers and students will also find it useful when doing local history projects.
Washington Public Library in Iowa
We are so excited to make our history available to residents both young and old, and to tell our story to the rest of the state, country, and world. What started out as a small project has gotten bigger with additional communities in our area all eager to participate. With the help of two large grants, the cost to our communities will be minimal and the benefits will be great.
Ida Grove Public Library in Iowa
The digital archives of the Ida Grove Library is a fantastic resource for library staff, patrons, and visitors. Having a searchable online database of newspapers allows us to quickly find information that would have normally taken hours of searching microfilm rolls, we can now do this in a matter of minutes.
University of Iowa Office of the Registrar in Iowa
The Registrar’s Office feels confident with our choice in keeping with technology – going digital – and with our selection of Advantage to process our conversions.”
William Paton Public Library in Iowa
Searching for information on the archive website is similar to searching for information on Google. Enter a name or keyword in the search field, and all the instances that name or keyword appears in all of these resources will be listed as search results. You can narrow down the results by date and resource and also print, email or save the articles you find.
Linn County Treasurer in Iowa
Advantage has been a valuable partner for the scanning needs of the Linn County Treasurer’s office for many years. Their weekly pickup and delivery of our paperwork is always on time and very dependable. The ease of searching their indexing allows my employees to have immediate access to hundreds of thousands of documents at their fingertips! They are a great company to work with!”
Jefferson Public Library in Iowa
Newspapers preserve the history of our communities. We have had very consistent usage of the Jefferson newspaper archive… and statistics also show usage from all other states and many other countries. We have always wanted to expand this resource to include resources that represent the history of the whole county.
The Catholic Messenger in Iowa
A newspaper is a journal of the life of a people, in the case of the Messenger, the life of the people of the Diocese of Davenport. So it is important that the Messenger be preserved. This new digital archive will make it easily accessible and preserve it for generations to come.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Published in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Our archives are an important part of community history. They help us understand events in our community’s history, and help us understand the contributions of generations past from a truly unique vantage point: as they were happening. Making these archives accessible to the public is a great service to the community.
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The Vernon Parish archive contains a wide variety of content, including yearbooks, newspapers, football history, and more. Established in 1871, Vernon Parish is steeped in history, its story intertwined with the tales of Native American tribes, European explorers, and resilient settlers who called this land home. Nestled within the boundaries of the former “No Man’s […]
The Community History Archives of The Catholic Globe contains nearly 40,000 historical pages from 1949-2020. The Catholic Globe is a weekly newspaper based in Sioux City, Iowa, that serves the Catholic community of the Diocese of Sioux City. The newspaper was founded in 1933 by Bishop Edmond Heelan, and it has been a reliable source […]
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The Coe College archive contains a wide variety of content, including yearbooks from 1903-2007 and newspapers from 1899-2013. Coe College was founded by Presbyterian minister Williston Jones in 1851. The college is located in Cedar Rapids, IA, and has an undergraduate enrollment of over 1,300 students. “The Coe College archive is a great tool for […]
Chattanooga and ARSL Over the past month, Advantage has been on the road. It all started when The Advantage team hit the road and headed out to Chattanooga for The Association of Rural and Small Libraries Conference. Being someone who has never been to Chatanooga, I was beyond surprised at how a town with less […]
We are pleased to announce that we will attend ILA next week in Coralville, Iowa. We will be in booth #7 and will be giving out bookmarks and rose gold pens. We would love it if you took a moment to stop by and chat. Did you know Advantage does more than just newspapers? Adding […]
The Community History Archives Of Greene County, Iowa The Greene County Librarians Association has made researching Greene County’s history easy! Their Community History Archive is free, easy to use, and offers a wide variety of historical resources representing all areas of the county. Greene County’s rich history spans over 175 years, dating back to 1849 […]
The Elkader Public Library Advantage is proud to Partner with the Elkader Public Library, giving the library’s patrons an easier way to search their community’s history as recorded in newspapers dating back to 1855, The Elkader Public Library is located in Elkader, Iowa, serving a community of nearly 1,300. Elkader is near the middle of […]
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 […]
Bring Iowa's Past Into The Present
Provide Free Access to Local Iowa History With a
Community History Archive
Advantage Archives partners with communities in Iowa and across the United States to archive & provide practical digital access to local historical content so that anyone, anywhere, can access it at any time, for free.
If you are affiliated with an Iowa library, newspaper publisher, genealogical society, historical society, government agency, or educational institution, and are interested in seeing more of Iowa's primary sources and local history online, let's schedule a time to talk about creating a Community History Archive!
Join The Conversation!
A community is more than just a group of people that happen to live in the same place; it is a group of individuals that share a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. That is why we created CommunityHistoryArchives.com. Community History Archives is a "community of communities," connecting like-minded individuals and institutions that share our love of history and a passion for connecting our communities to their past!
Interested In Learning More?
Tell us a little about yourself, your institution, and what kind of project you would like to discuss. We would love to talk to you!