The Friends of the Smithers Public Library are campaigning to get 100 years of the Smithers Interior News digitized.
Lorraine Doiron says the reasons for needing digital archives of local news are endless from easy research for students, authors and professionals to genealogical studies.
“It would help so many people to have access to their history, personal history, not just general history…Microfilm isn’t exactly the easiest thing to use because you have to go through each page. And going through 100 years of page by page of the Interior News was really tiring and mind boggling.”
She says right now they are at the fundraising stage which so far has included donations from the Bulkley Valley Genealogical Society and private funder Dirk Mendal.
They need $35,000 for the whole project but are starting with a small selection of the paper from 1910 to 1957.