Preserving History: Digitization of the Scarsdale Inquirer Continues

We are pleased to continue working with the Scarsdale Public Library to digitize issues of the Scarsdale Inquirer. Our latest grant will allow digitization of the issues from 1954 to 1977. Issues starting in 1901 are already online at news.hrvh.org. Here is the press release about the project:

Preserving History: Digitization of The Scarsdale Inquirer ContinuesScarsdale Historical Society and Scarsdale Public Library in Joint Effort

SCARSDALE, NY (May 5th, 2018)  In 2010 the Scarsdale Historical Society and the Scarsdale Public Library began a joint project to digitize back issues of The Scarsdale Inquirer, Scarsdale’s source for local news since 1901. Grants of over $50,000 given by the Historical Society funded the first two phases of the digitization project, covering the years 1901-1950. Now the Society has committed an additional $37,000 to continue the project through the year 1977. Anybody can access the digitized material at news.hrvh.org, an online resource housing historical newspapers as part of the Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) service. You can also find links to the papers on the websites of the Scarsdale Historical Society and the Scarsdale Public Library. We anticipate full digitization through 1977 within a year.

Re-filming from the original papers and the generation of digital images for the project is being done by Hudson Archival, located in Port Ewen, N.Y. We are happy to continue working with this great local business for this part of the project. Generation of the metadata (METS/ALTO) necessary to put the images onto HRVH is being done by Digital Divide Data (DDD). DDD’s innovative social model enables talent from underserved populations to access professional opportunities and earn lasting higher income, including youth from low-income families in developing countries, as well as military spouses and veterans. 

The digitization of The Scarsdale Inquirer opens our history to students, researchers, and residents. In the past, access to back issues was available at the library in print and microfilm, with limited finding aids created by Scarsdale librarians. The creation of these indexes was very time intensive and did not allow for full text searching. Furthermore there is no index for the years 1958-1979. Once issues are put onto HRVH they are fully searchable and the content can even be found through Google searches.

“We are so grateful to the Scarsdale Historical Society for their continued support for this digitization project. The Scarsdale Inquirer is an important resource for our community and having online access will increase its availability exponentially.”
—Elizabeth Bermel, Scarsdale Library Director