More than 100 people attended the Through the Pages costume ball at Skidompha Library on Friday, Feb. 22. The event was a fundraiser for The Lincoln County News digitization project. (Photo courtesy Dennis Boyd, dennisboydphotography.com)
More than 100 people donned their finest period wear for the Through the Pages costume ball at Skidompha Library on Friday, Feb. 22 to support efforts to digitize the entire archives of The Lincoln County News.
The fancy dress costume ball was a fundraiser for The Lincoln County News digitization project, which will preserve the complete archives of the LCN, along with the partial archives of some of its predecessors. Skidompha Library and the Lincoln County Publishing Co., which publishes the newspaper, are partners on the project and have been working together on the effort since December 2017.
In January, the archives at the Lincoln County Courthouse were packed into boxes and brought to Lincoln County Publishing Co. in Newcastle for pickup by a truck that brought them to Advantage Preservation, a firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that specializes in the digitization of old and fragile newspapers. The shipment arrived Feb. 2.
Friday evening, guests dressed in apparel from the 1800s through the present day as they enjoyed light bites, local brews from Odd Alewives Farm Brewery and Oxbow Brewing Co., and live music from a string quartet, the library’s resident ukulele group, and Spearforger.
Kathleen Maclachlan, Skidompha’s staff genealogist, spoke about the importance of preserving the archives. As a result of the digitization, more than 81,000 pages of newsprint will be preserved in four different formats and stored safely in five locations.
While the project has great importance for individuals interested in genealogy, the preservation of the community’s news can also help give people a sense of belonging and identity, Maclachlan said.
“We will have kids come in and ask, ‘Hey, can we find out if there is someone in our family who was artistic or musical? Because nobody in my family seems to be and I just wonder where it came from,’” Maclachlan said.
“This gives us that sense of belonging, and also a sense of where our community has been and what we have done. The triumphs and some of the ways that, as individuals and as a community, we have messed up,” Maclachlan said. “We get to learn from reading about what happened in the past and maybe we have a chance to do it over.”
J.W. Oliver, editor of The Lincoln County News, expressed gratitude for the work of Maclachlan; Torie DeLisle, director of development and programs for Skidompha Library; and local researcher Patti Whitten.
“Without them, the newspapers would undoubtedly still be gathering dust,” Oliver said. “Instead, today they’re in Iowa on their way to digitization.”
Oliver called the project “the single most important thing” he has been involved in during almost nine years at the LCN.
“In my opinion, what we are doing is giving Lincoln County its history back,” Oliver said.
The cost of the project is estimated to be $50,000. In October 2018, Skidompha received a $30,000 grant from the Burns Family Foundation to fund 60 percent of the project. Additional private donations have raised close to $10,000.
With the proceeds from the ball and the silent auction, an estimated $2,500 is still needed to complete the project, according to Skidompha Library Executive Director Pam Gormley.
“I was delighted by Friday evening for a number of reasons,” Gormley said. “I was delighted by the number of people who came out, all the effort people put into their costumes, and by the variety of generations represented at the event.”
“There’s no better criteria for community success than that,” Gormley said.
To support the digitization of the LCN archives, go to skidompha.org or call the library’s development office at 563-1940.
