A project to digitise more than 130 years of local history immortalised in the pages of the Herald – and make it free to access for the public online – is set to take off in 2023 after a frenzy of activity behind the scenes by a dedicated band of volunteers over the past 12 months.
image: for illustration – Context 174, article by Damien Blower Where will all the drawings go?
… free at the point of use…
The Farnham Herald writes:
The Herald Digital Archive Project was first launched in November 2019 and quickly attracted a flurry of support from potential volunteers, local history groups and other organisations. Unfortunately the pandemic stalled the project’s roll-out.
But at the beginning of 2022, a steering group was formed…
With the help of volunteers over the past year, some 80 per cent of the Herald’s physical paper archives – totalling some 785 volumes of newsprint – have now been inventoried, while an astonishing 99,000 photo negatives have been indexed.
As a result, the archive project has now moved from its ‘initiation’ into the detailed ‘planning’ phase, and an initial meeting was held with the British Library in November to discuss options for digitising the Herald volumes. It is hoped fundraising will begin in early 2023 once options and costs for the Herald digitisation have been assessed.
Herald Digital Archive Project chairman Lesley Bunting said: “This project is about making sure all the heritage contained in the pages of the Herald over the past 130 years is available, free at the point of use for the community going forward, and making sure the fragile original media is preserved.”
… anybody searching for a particular article will be able to type in certain keywords – for example “Harold Falkner” or “Farnham Castle” – and be shown all relevant results dating back 130 years….
… with the help of… microfilms dating back to the first-ever edition of the Herald in 1892, the project should be able to digitise a complete archive of the Herald and its various editions – covering Farnham, Alton, Haslemere, Bordon, Liphook, Petersfield and, for a short period, Hook….
See more from Context on local archives at DAMIEN BLOWER – Where will the drawings go?
