Tenterfield Shire Council has won the 2008 Library and Information Services Category of the NSW Local Government Cultural Awards for councils serving populations under 20,000.
The award-winning project involved the digitisation of Tenterfield newspapers from 1875 to 1955 to facilitate keyword searching. Manager of Library and Cultural Services Robin Riley received the award at Parliament House, Sydney, last Friday.
The newspapers were digitised with the consent of proprietors, Rural Press (now Fairfax Media), and previous owners Geoff and Margy Hovey, Noelle MacKellow and Sue Jurd. Bound copies had previously been supplied to Tenterfield Public Library on the condition that their content would be preserved on microfilm.
Mrs Riley said that the keyword searchable archive is available on all eight public computers at the Library and is proving popular with family and local historians and students.
The digitisation of the newspapers was undertaken in 2007 with a State Library Development Grant of $20,775 and council support. The council’s IT Manager Paul Chawner oversaw the technological process which involved scanning the microfilm of the newspapers to TIF (Bitonal) format at 400ppi for conversion to a searchable PDF format via ABBY Finereader. The images were then imported to a repository in Captaris Alchemy Gold.
Tenterfield Star editor Lisa Finnerty was excited with the news that the project had won the state award.
“We receive many requests from people who wish to look up material in the old newspapers and always point them in the direction of the library. Without exact dates it can be very time-consuming thumbing through bound copies trying to find old articles, so the keyword search facility is a huge help.”