Chelan Museum seeks volunteers to help digitize newspaper archives

CHELAN – Imagine being able to search the entire history of the Lake Chelan Mirror online, from its founding in 1891 to the present day. 

Thanks to the Lake Chelan Museum, this vision is on its way to becoming a reality. But they need the community’s help to make it happen.

Using optical character recognition (OCR), scanned pages will eventually become part of a searchable database, covering the newspaper’s history from 1891 to the present. 

“It would give everybody the ability to search online, the newspaper in a truly digital form,” Museum Manager Ron McGaughey said.

Volunteers are needed for the first step in the process which is to assess the condition of each physical page to foresee obstacles to optical scanning. Volunteers will need basic computer and Excel skills to help with data entry and can work at the museum or remotely.

Museum board member Susan Hauth has begun this process, but she needs help, McGaughey said.

The project will build on the work of long time volunteers Jim and Pat Parker who photographed approximately 75,000 pages, the museum’s entire collection, over ten years. 

However, those pages are only part of the entire newspaper history, McGaughey said. 

The museum has permission to use other resources including NCW Library, Washington State Library and the Lake Chelan Mirror to bring the collection up to the present.

The project can make a major impact for the entire community and beyond. Researchers across the country will have access, McGaughey said. 

Once completed, the digitized archives will be freely available for public use. Those interested in helping can contact the museum at chelanmuseum@nwi.net or call 509-682-5644.

Quinn Propst: 509-731-3590 or quinn@ward.media.