By Brett McMahon
The St. Joseph Record, a newspaper published between 1894 and 1980, may soon be available online, allowing current and previous residents of the village to learn more about historical events.
Mary Butzow, a volunteer at the Champaign County History Museum, approached facility manager Connor Monson earlier this year about the idea of digitizing the St. Joseph Record newspaper. Mary’s friend, the Butler family, holds the copyright for the paper and would like to make past issues available to members of the community. Monson, Butzow, and Butler are three of eight members of the Champaign County Newspaper Digitization Initiative. The group also includes members from the Champaign County Library and the University of Illinois as well as other organizations across Champaign County.
The goal of CCNDI is to spearhead the digitization of books, newspapers, and microfilm into a format that can be made available online without a subscription through the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection website. Monson and Butzow approached Greg Knott, the administrator of the Facebook group History of St. Joseph, and CCNDI partnered with the group. Fundraising efforts were put in place to raise money for the project with each fundraiser running 90 days at a time. So far, around $3,000 has been raised with a deadline of late January 2023 for the current round of donations.
The project still needs a great deal of funding to come to fruition as the cost of digitizing is between $0.65 cents and $1 per page. The ultimate final goal would be to raise $30,000, which would allow for all 86 years of the paper to become available digitally. The papers will be done in 20-year increments starting with 1960-1980, but Monson and his colleagues hope to at least raise the $15,000 it would take to make the World War II era available, with digitizing 1940-1960.
Monson says whatever amount is raised, they are committed to the digitizing efforts of that many pages, but if the full amount is not met, unfortunately, the papers will never become available online. He says the process, which involves scanning the papers, placing them online, and indexing them for visitors to the site, will take between six months to a year once the order is placed with the company doing the work.
Despite being involved with the general process for about seven years, Monson says the St. Joseph Record marks the first time he’s worked with something on a small-town level. This is an exciting venture since it can allow historical data to become available, which is something Monson is passionate about. In fact, if this project becomes fully funded, Monson and his group plan to move on to another local paper and work to accomplish the same thing.
There is hope the community will become heavily involved in fundraising to meet each goal set within 90-day periods. Still, Monson and the others hope eventually to see the St. Joseph community get involved with learning about the history of the village once the paper becomes available to them. Those from the public wishing to contribute to the efforts can do so via Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/donate/513478494031862/5789794347774533/
Or on the group’s Square page at:
