Antigonish museum opens up free online access to 100 years of community news

The Antigonish Heritage Museum is giving a Heritage Day gift to Nova Scotia and the world by providing free access to a new online library of more than a century of local news.

The museum became the caretaker for bound issues of The Casket community newspaper spanning 1890 to 2006 and decided to make them available to the public in digital form, says curator Barry MacKenzie.

The Casket was first published in 1852 and was the "newspaper of record" for the county and much of eastern Nova Scotia, MacKenzie said.

He said until now researchers wanting to see the newspaper had to view issues on microfilm at the Nova Scotia Archives or at St. Francis Xavier University.

"It was the paper that recorded the goings on of the community, the births to deaths and the marriages and various other developments as the town developed and grew and the university developed," he said.

"It's an important part of our heritage and as such we were glad to be able to do a little something to make it more accessible."

MacKenzie said a Halifax company has been digitizing 50 years of the collection for the past three years, funded by a grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the museum's own resources.

More issues and other community news material will be added in the coming years and months, he said.

Improving research opportunities

Robin Neustaeter, an assistant professor at St. Francis Xavier University, said the digitization project will make it easier to research the area's history and called it "a game changer."

She's researching the women of the university's extension department, and much of that historical information was recorded in The Casket.

"My research is part of my work, but I think there's a lot of citizen researchers ... who might be interested in learning more about their family ties or the area or community, so it's also a wonderful opportunity for researchers of all types," said Neustaeter, noting researchers won't be constrained by geography.

She said the paper was "an important forum for educating and sharing ideas with the community."

Funding for the digitization project

Revamping the museum's website to host a searchable database of the collection was supported by provincial money, according to MacKenzie.

He said the museum also plans to upload digital scans of microfilm versions of issues that it does not currently own.

Because The Casket was such an important part of the community for so long, MacKenzie said it can provide insight into social and cultural subjects, local news and genealogy.

He said when the project started there were questions about using the database as a potential revenue source but because of its importance to researchers worldwide it was decided to make it freely available.

The official launch of online access to the newspaper is taking place at 2 p.m. AT Monday afternoon at the museum.

"It's very user-friendly," MacKenzie said. "We think it's going to be something people can pick up quite easily and take it and run with it and have fun."