The Hazel Park Historical Commission is announcing an important initiative of the Hazel Park Historical Commission. For many years, we have had bound copies of the Palladium and Hazel Park News newspapers at the Hazel Park Memorial Library. The years covered by these volumes are 1938- 1978, 40 years of publication. We of the commission have used these papers extensively to do research, and the general public has as well, up till recently. These newspapers are starting to deteriorate. Unfortunately, they were printed on acid paper, which causes the pages to become brittle and yellowed.
We feel that digitizing the newspapers is the best answer for preservation. While another set is being microfilmed at the State of Michigan Newspaper Project, we don't anticipate that film any time soon due to budget cuts to the arts in Lansing as well as priorities in filming beyond our control.
Digitizing the newspapers has benefits beyond preservation. The original sample paper is from December 1975. The paper has a yellow cast to it. When it was scanned, this yellow cast was removed, and they are optically scanned for text recognition. What this means is the newspapers will be searchable. This feature will be invaluable to historical researchers, Genealogists, and everyone interested it what has happened here in Hazel Park within the scope of these publications. The output of these scanned files will be through Adobe Acrobat,a PDF file, which is a free program that is on most computers.
We intend on having these files available to all, either on CD or on the Internet through the Commission's website.
Now comes the hard part. Each year of the newspapers will cost 108 dollars to digitize. We are looking for sponsors to defray the cost of the digitization. Sponsors will be listed on our website, on the splash page where the downloads are obtained. Any amount is welcome, and we'd welcome any corporate sponsorships, of course. I can't stress enough about how vitally important this is to preserve the City's history, it's a cultural resource that we all can be proud of. There are many families that are long time residents listed within the pages, Obituaries, wedding announcements, civic items, all things that can be made available with a donation. We need to have as much help as possible with the monetary appeal.
Now a little bit about the benefits of donation: