OurDigitalWorld Newsletter: Autumn 2025

Pumpkins & Pencils: Back to School with Primary Resources

Heading into the classroom is always exciting, and every year offers up new challenges. This year, teachers and students at every level are embarking on a learning experience like never before with the surge of AI tools and auto-generated resources. While harnessing that power will have its application, learning how to search, analyse and assess primary and legitimate sources is especially important for young students as they start into this amalgam world where the line between real and real-istic are blurred. Read more…

Online Collections for Research and Resources

Searching for your favourite sport, schools, family names, or social activities to find community based collection items like photos and yearbooks and vital statistics as well as primary materials like government documents, city directories, treaties and more. These collections are a goldmine for researchers of all ages. Read more…

Upcoming Events: See you there!

Join us at the 2025 Illinois Library Association Annual Conference, on Ontario Ancestors 2025 Webinar Series and at the 2026 Ontario Library Association Super Conference. Read more…

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter: July 2025

AI Bots & Crawlers: Fighting invisible foes

AI is the topic of the year, for better or for worse. The AI large learning models (LLM) are sending bots and crawlers to sweep across the internet and pulling public content to feed the machines that are now informing everything from predictive text to scientific analysis, and is being exponentially employed for all matter of applications. It is a truly awesome development in human history. It is also destructive and is having universal impact on online resources large and small. Read more…

New Collections

The Whitestone Public Library collection is throwing opening a window into the history of families, farming, fishing and relaxing in the lakes and fields north of Parry Sound, Ontario. Read more…

Growing Collections

New Prince Edward/Hastings WI documents

The Prince Edward/Hastings branch of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario have digitized, reviewed and released another 70 volumes of Tweedsmuirs and other WI history, tracing current day back to the 1800s. These documents offer a host of family names, local events and activities, and reflect the unfathomable support these women provide to their communities.

Explore the collection

Wilmette Newspapers

More than 32,000 more pages of local papers are now part of the Wilmette Newspaper Index site, with issues of the Wilmette Life and Wilmette Beacon public and/or accessible through the library workstations. Dense with illustrations and local stories, the newspapers add to the larger story of the Greater Chicago area.

Explore the collection

Good News

Congratulations to the recent DHCP Funding recipients & Meet us at Illinois Library Association Annual Conference. Read more…

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter: April 2025

Winds of Change: IMLS defunding a giant blow to GLAM sector

It’s hard not to talk about politics in any industry these days and while we try to remain neutral and truly “politic”, ODW shares many of the feelings on both sides of the border about the defunding of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in the US. It is difficult to imagine the effect of having a national institution so hastily removed from the landscape of culture, education and the communities it serves.

What does this mean for Libraries in the US? According to the FAQ on the American Library Association website, “The intent to undercut and eliminate the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is extremely shortsighted and perilous for the millions of Americans who rely on our public, school, academic, and special libraries. Library funding draws less than 0.003% of the annual federal budget yet has enormous impact in communities nationwide.”

The American Alliance of Museums is also responding with a letter from the AAM President as part their advocacy campaign, underlining the democratic nature of museums: “Museums are vital to American infrastructure, serve all people in states red and blue and communities rural to urban, receive significant support from Americans regardless of political party, and any threat to museum funding—including threats to the federal agencies that support museums—is a threat to their own communities.” Read more.

These organizations, as well as state library associations and their members, are issuing calls to action and standing up for a return to stable, socially responsible governance and support. In solidarity, we encourage everyone to back these efforts and advocate for the community and shared values of the GLAM sector on both sides of the border and internationally.

Cross-border history: Inland Seas Journal

The Inland Seas bulletin has been the cornerstone of the Great Lakes Historical Society since the organization first started in 1944. Thanks to the National Museum of the Great Lakes and their dedicated volunteers, these bulletins are now available online from 1945-2020, exploring the breadth of influence the Great Lakes have had across North America for centuries.

An essential research tool, the Inland Seas is fascinating view into the lake faring history shared by the US and Canada.

Explore the collection

Community History Connections

First Nations peoples and their territories span the continent and have since before any national borders were established. Settler families have migrated to North America and between the US and Canada for centuries. Ships, railways, highways, planes and more continuously traverse the boundaries. From genealogical records to exhibits, these stories are entwined and ever moving and the community collections offer so many ways to explore our shared histories…

Bring up the house lights!

The Gateway Theatre Guild is the oldest community theatre group in Northern Ontario. Established in 1948, the non-profit community theatre company in North Bay is sharing reviews, photos, programs and more. Explore the collection

Along the Canal: Welland People and Events

The Welland Public Library Genealogy Database is a researcher’s paradise, bringing more than 119,000 Birth, Death, Marriage, Adoption, Anniversary and Obituary notices and more from local newspapers, covering 1615 to current day. Explore the collection

Upcoming Events: Proudly Sponsored by ODW

Archives Association of Ontario

May 6-8, 2025

The AAO 2025 theme is Ebb and Flow: Narratives of Adaptability and explores how the path towards innovation and growth is rarely straightforward. #aao25conf

British Columbia Library Association

May 7-9, 2025

The BCLA 2025 theme is Navigating Together, reflecting how we can navigate our current reality of rapid change and complex challenges together, better than we ever could alone. Learn more

Atlantic Provinces Library Association

June 10-12, 2025

The APLA 2025 theme, Breaking Barriers aims to explore how libraries are challenging traditional boundaries, embracing innovation, and empowering individuals and communities. #APLA2025

ODW Newsletter: Autumn 2024

This Fall at ODW: A flurry of activity

Some people say September is the new January – and it certainly feels that way in the ODW offices. This autumn has been a flurry of activity. The harsh reality of vinegar syndrome has meant that there is a real upsurge in digitization projects, so there are many recent additions to new and existing collections. Internally, our Board has grown and we’re happy to be working with such an incredible collection of people. As well, we’re looking forward to seeing everyone at some upcoming conferences, and excited about collaborating with CRKN to bring an improved set of Abolitionist newspapers online for better and wider access. Even though it’s fall, we’re celebrating a season of growth and so much to share.

Read the full newsletter

Online newspaper collections continue to grow

Learn more about recent additions to the online collections here

All of these papers are also available through the Ontario Community Newspapers site and OurOntario.ca

More news…

Abolitionist newspaper project with Canadiana
Meet the ODW Board
Upcoming conferences

Read the full newsletter

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter April 2024

After the Eclipse…

There is a certain irony that a full eclipse was occurring over North America just as OurDigitalWorld was emerging from a long service outage.

Our own path of totality started February 25, the day – as chance would have it – we presented a live webinar about searching the digital newspaper collections. Thankfully all examples were screenshots, since all the online collections were unexpectedly returning blank error screens. The next day, we were told that we were caught in a massive system shut down at the City of Hamilton, Ontario in response to a cyber attack. Read more…

Updates from…

Community Newspaper Working Group

At the recent meeting of the Community Newspaper Working Group (CNWG), discussions centred around proposals from two newspaper companies, TorStar and PostMedia. Read more…

Coalition for Canadian Digital Heritage

The CCDH is excited to announce it’s Year in Review for 2023. Read more…

Visit us at our upcoming conferences

We’re sponsoring

We’re attending

We’re speaking

Revealing the Mysteries of Community Newspapers

This is a guest post by Linda Calvert, a student in the Library Technician program at Mohawk College.

For the past few weeks, I have been helping OurDigitalWorld by researching and describing the history of the Ontario newspaper publications in the Ontario Community Newspapers collections. Community newspaper histories are embedded in local lore but not often described for outsiders, which was part of the challenge I was offered for my placement. The intention is to discover and compile more historical information for the Publication records in the database, by including a general description, publication relationships between titles, and date ranges, all to enhance access points for searching and browsing the already digitized community newspapers.

While working on this project, many of the records I was able to produce were fairly straightforward, but it came to our attention that there were some publications with fascinating histories. To find out more about one mysterious story, I spoke with Caroline Goulding, CEO at the Dryden Public Library, about the Dryden Observer and how the library uncovered the paper copies for digitization.

The early history of the Dryden Observer is not well documented, so is based mainly on the remaining physical copies and local lore. The earliest physical copy is dated 1902, but its predecessor, the Wabigoon Star, dates back as early as 1895. We do know that the Observer was published by Alex Wilson Publications and was sold to Northwest Publishing in 2015 or thereabouts. After a short but bumpy run, the paper suddenly ceased publication in 2019, the phones were shut off and the staff dispersed.

Fast forward to current day when the Library and Museum wanted to find, preserve and archive the print copies of the newspaper. Assuming the back copies would have been left behind by the Northwest Publishing staff, they talked to the new owner of the Observer building to gain access to the space – only to discover the papers were nowhere to be found! It seemed the Observer newspaper was lost in every possible way.

However, in another mysterious turn of events, when a local mini-storage owner was forced to repossess one of the sea cans on his lot he opened it up and discovered the missing issues. The owner knew that Dryden Public Library and Dryden & District Museum staff were looking for these papers, so he turned them over.

Most people’s first thought on hearing this is that the papers must have been irreversibly damaged over time and would have to be dismissed as garbage. This was not the case: No one knows who did it or when, but someone had had the foresight to wrap the back copy issues in cellophane before putting them into the storage container, ensuring that they were protected from bugs, critters and moisture.

As a result of this happy discovery, the Dryden Public Library and Dryden & District Museum is digitizing the earlier copies with the help of OurDigitalWorld and with funding from the Museum Assistance Program. Public domain copies from the 1880s to the early 1930s are openly available online, with later issues also available on workstations in the Library branch at https://vitacollections.ca/drydenarchives/search.

The illustrious sea can collection has delivered back a long-standing voice for the region. Only a few gaps remain in the earliest years, especially around World War II, but the run is complete from 1932-2019. The Library and Museum not only hopes the community might have some of the missing issues to fill those gaps, but that the last copyright holder might step forward and permit the rest of the collection to be made fully available to the public.

Meanwhile, the other newspaper publication histories we complied will be added to their related records and help document their relationships within and between communities.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/dryden-observer-northern-sun-news-cease-publication-1.5201306

https://www.netnewsledger.com/2019/04/16/dryden-observer-not-publishing-this-week

https://www.netnewsledger.com/2019/06/29/historic-dryden-observer-seizes-publishing/

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter December 2023

Looking back on a wonderful 2023, we’re entering 2024 with a spring in our step, great optimism about the upcoming year and are looking forward to all the opportunities the new year has to offer.

Read more about the annual growth of the online collections, recent projects and software upgrades, collection features, and VITA Collections in the News here.

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter September 2023

On the importance of our community newspapers

Over the years, ODW has been motivated to support grassroots organizations preserve and share their community history and local newspapers. Why? Because these are the stories of our neighbours, near and far; because they help us understand our own and each other’s communities and bind us as a society; because they build a valuable web of information about our past and our present. We are therefore disheartened at the announcement of severe cuts to community newspaper paper publications across Ontario, some that have been running for nearly 200 years (Small-town community papers take big hit after Metroland files for bankruptcy), and for the staff and journalists behind those publications who are affected by the changes. This is a tremendous blow, isolating individuals without access to the internet and further distancing people from their community through homogenized “news” reported from centralized, mainly urban, sources.

Reflecting on these recent developments, ODW wants to thank the organizations who steward their local newspaper collections and provide access to the stories, personalities and issues that reflect the fabric of our communities. The Ontario LAM Newspapers Working Group is also be convening about this announcement. Please get in touch about their work, and/or to share any news or concerns you may have about your community newspaper by writing to: CommunityNewspapersON@gmail.com

ODW Projects

New life for old database records

13,000 index records have been meticulously cleaned up and migrated to be included in the collections from Waterloo Public Library. These index records highlight contents from magazines, newspapers, city directories and vertical files in the physical Local History collection, allowing users to identify which items to access and review. The initial labour involved in creating this depth of indexing is substantial, so making them available online honours that work and provides enhanced access for the public. Explore the collection

Hyper-local news has historical clout

The South Marysburgh Mirror is an independent newsletter that began publishing in 1990 in the southernmost part of Loyalist-settled Prince Edward County, Ontario. The Mirror covers annual events like the still-running agricultural Milford Fall Fair and the New Year’s Levee, and includes monthly updates from the local Women’s Institute, churches, and transcriptions of local rural diaries. These hyper-local stories fill many gaps in the larger publications in the area like the Picton Gazette and Belleville Intelligencer, offering decades of insight into a tightly knit, rural community. Explore the collection

Historical Society achieves long-term goal

The Lake Scugog Historical Society, a volunteer-run, not for profit organization, achieved a significant milestone by finishing their newspaper digitization project. The result is more than 150 years of coverage from local newspaper collections that were preserved on paper, microfilm, microfiche and born-digital PDF. The collection includes early dailies like the Ontario Observer and Port Perry Star and the more recent Scugog Citizen weekly and Focus on Scugog monthly magazine. Thanks to their perseverance, this adds breadth to the online and historical coverage available for the central Durham, Ontario region. (Photo from The History of Port Perry’s Newspapers). Explore the collection

New VITA Digital Collections

Archived Oxford: A view into Oxford County’s past

A new project from Oxford County Archives, described as starting with “260 individual postcards [that] feature images of local streets, scenery, and buildings in Oxford County, along with some promotional material from historical businesses. We will be expanding to include … just over 3,000 photographs … which again, include locations and buildings throughout Oxford County, events, people, businesses, etc.” Explore the collection

Great Lakes Vessels database sails again

The Wisconsin Maritime Museum has migrated the Gerald C. Metzler Great Lakes Vessel Database into ODW’s unique Vessels metadata templates. These historical records detail vessel dimensions, classification, builder and shipmaster names, as well as changes over time. Much like other vital statistics, the vessel records capture the places of a ship’s birth, travel, and, if sunk, final location – a real boon for wreck divers. This collection can be searched independently but will also add more than 13,000 detailed vessel records to the fast growing Great Lakes History search site. Explore the collection

Coming Soon

Oshawa Newspapers
1955-1961

Oshawa Public Library is adding later years of the Oshawa Times and Daily Times-Gazette to their already extensive newspaper collection. The newspapers will be scanned from microfilm and made full text searchable, enhancing access to the Oshawa collection as well as the Durham Newspapers regional site. Explore the collection

Dryden Observer
1902-2016

Covering life in Northern Ontario for more than a century, the Dryden Observer includes “significant moments in Dryden’s development such as the building of the Dryden Public High School, advertisements from local businesses, and records of life from citizens, from obituaries to personal letters to the editor.” Dryden Museum

Join us at the 2024 Ontario Library Association annual Super Conference in Toronto, Ontario, January 24-27, 2024. Visit our booth to meet the team, catch up on our latest projects, learn more about us and find out how we can help with your digitization projects.

Header photo credit: Rosseau Historical Society “Highway 632, Bridge over Shadow River – 2 – RV0041”

Improving access to heritage newspaper content: Replacing microfilm with original paper scans

From guest blogger Walter Lewis, Great Lakes historian and software developer for OurDigitalWorld.

Some years ago the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University organized the microfilming of many of the early issues of both the Marine Record and the Marine Review up to end of 1902. In 2010, we added just short of 17,000 pages from that microfilm to the Maritime History of the Great Lakes website covering the years 1883-1902. Thanks to issues shared by the Dossin Museum in Detroit, along with Ron Beaupre and Greg Rudnick, I have been able to both extend the coverage of the Marine Review to its end in 1935, but also to replace all but 2500 pages of the microfilm with images from the originals. The result is just over 55,000 pages of marine journalism published in Cleveland, Ohio. The journals had deep roots in Great Lakes shipping and although from World War I, there was an increasing emphasis on global developments.

One question I have been asked is “why go to the time and effort to re-shoot the issues from the originals?” A couple of examples may explain why.

Almost all microfilm is photographed in black and white, with an emphasis on high contrast exposures that improves the ability to read the text on standard microfilm readers. The company that digitized the BGSU microfilm emphasized this contrast in the files they produced for us. For pages from the era of woodcut engravings this is less of an concern, although the additional generation of negative/positive print before digitization can still introduce focus issues. The challenge in many films comes from shadows in gutters in instances when the paper wasn’t disbound before filming (true here). Content in those columns may come up very dark, and after digitization, black on black. In part this is because many digitization projects, especially ones done ten or more years ago, were struggling to reduce file size and assumed that bitonal (aka each pixel in the image is either black or white) images would be acceptable. In some instances they are. But with the increasing use of photographs in the 1890s, the degree of greyness at which a given point on the page was converted to either black or white, makes for some very unhappy images. The Marine Review prided itself on its illustrations. Reshooting these, not just in greyscale, but in colour restored a significant amount of detail. This was especially true, when some earlier owner of the issue marked it up with a blue or other coloured pencil.

Image from a microfilm scan — From Microfilm

Image of a scan from paper original — From Original

The conversion to bitonal files also has a significant impact on the quality of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of the files. This is a computer process that converts the images of the text to text that can be searched in our indexes. When, for example, letters have parts that print more faintly, or where there is bleed-through from the ink on the other side of the page, the results are far from satisfactory.

From the Microfilm

A ILUBBY OYIB DIIY TOBTUGAB.
Iuststpruentthereisalittle ﬂurryin Wuhingtoubetween the navy department and the Marine Hospital service. navy ‘departlnent has recently yent 050.000 establishing a coding nation at Dry Tor- tuga: an In
equt wha considers. u the island. the most im- rortan ‘ 1ss::erntheChesa eand Central America. A ew bp g was en rised to receive a notiﬁatiqn from the ta-usury department to stop war at Dr! TOTIIIEII 5! t\P”‘ 1. 55 Surgeon General W needed the place to are for yellow lever and
bubonic plague patients. The ma thinks that the-e are sevwal other adjacent s a avail: . ‘lﬂlfvgaa and will de- elinetosurrenderDry ortugasnnlesslpecl yoﬁldtdmdoiohr lhepréktthirnlell ‘ .

From reshoot of original

A FLURRY OVER DRY TORTUGAS. Just at present there is a little flurry in Washington between the navy
department and the Marine Hospital service. The navy department_has
recently spent about $50,000 in establishing a coaling station at Dry Tor-
tugas and in equipping what it considers, upon the island, the most im-
portant strategic base between the Chesapeake and Central America. A
few days ago Secretary Long was surprised to receive a notification from
the treasury department to stop work at Dry Tortugas by April 1, as
Surgeon General Wyman needed the place to care for yellow fever and
bubonic plague patients. The navy department thinks that there are
several other adjacent spots available for hospital purposes and will de-
cline to surrender Dry Tortugas unless specifically ordered to do so by
the president himself.

There are still minor gaps in the files where pages are missing from issues, and a significant number of early issues are still missing, but the results are worth the effort. Now if we could only locate some issues of the Record from before 1883.

To read the full article, see Walter Lewis’ Maritime History of the Great Lakes website: http://stories.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/digitizing-the-marine-record-and-marine-review/