POINT PLEASANT BEACH — The Ocean County Library has been awarded a $22,242 grant to digitize more than 40 years of The Ocean County Leader, the predecessor to the contemporary Ocean Star.
According to the New Jersey State Library (NJSL), an affiliate of Thomas Edison State University, the grant was awarded through the NJSL’s “REV 250: Examining the Semiquincentennial Through a Jersey Lens” grant program.
According to an NJSL grant announcement, the program is intended to support “selected public libraries across the state as they engage their communities in honoring New Jersey’s central role in the American Revolution.”
“Local newspapers capture the everyday life and major milestones of a community,” said the grant award announcement from NJSL. “Yet, when only available on microfilm or in fragile paper copies, this valuable history is often inaccessible. This project will digitize over 40 years of The Ocean County Leader, the key newspaper for Point Pleasant Beach, Point Pleasant, Bay Head, Mantoloking and Lavallette.”
“Making it searchable online will unlock decades of local business history, school records, family announcements and more, benefiting researchers, students, genealogists and historians, ensuring this vital part of Ocean County’s story is preserved and easily accessible to the public,” the NJSL said.
Elizabeth Cronin, coordinator of information services at Ocean County Library, told The Ocean Star Monday that, while the library is in possession of digitized records from central and southern Ocean County newspapers, staff had noticed that material from northern Ocean County was lacking.
“We had southern, we had central; and so I was really looking to see what we had in northern (Ocean),” she said. “We had a small collection of microfilm — about 20 years — but I had heard over the years that there were bound volumes of The Leader…After Sandy, I called to see if the volumes had survived, and I was told that they had, but were not accessible for people wanting to check out an obituary or things like that. So, I put digitizing The Leader bound volumes on my wishlist, and the years kept going by.”
“It’s very expensive to digitize bound volumes, because you have to digitize the volumes and make microfilm rolls; then, the microfilm rolls can be computerized and digitized and become searchable, ending up on a computer where people can use them — you can’t go directly from bound volumes to material on the website,” said Cronin.
Cronin explained that, while The Leader began publication in 1916, the microfilm of the newspaper currently stored at Ocean County Library’s Toms River Branch runs from 1937 to the end of the 1950s.
The Leader was purchased from Rockfleet Media, Inc. by Star News Group, in 1998 soon after the publisher of The Coast Star launched The Ocean Star publication.
“One of our librarians is coming to (The Ocean Star’s) offices this week to find out what years are in those bound volumes,” she said. “I don’t know if it will be a complete set, but we’ve got to get what we can get while it still exists…I’m hoping we get as much as possible; it would be really nice if we could see the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s up to when The Leader stopped.”
She said that receiving the copyright access from Star News Group to digitize The Leader was relatively easy compared to gaining access to other publications’ copyrights.
“It’s really wonderful that the publisher is granting us copyright access so we can post this for people,” said Cronin. “Copyright for newspapers…is very complicated. Some things can be out of copyright, and some stay in copyright for a very long time. Was it published by someone who is a freelancer? Was it by somebody who had a contract?”
Matt Willbergh, branch manager for Ocean County Library’s Point Pleasant Beach Branch, was the librarian who visited The Ocean Star’s office in Manasquan on Thursday, taking inventory of the many bound volumes and microfilm reels containing The Ocean County Leader.
“(Digitization) opens old records up to the community and allows the community to access the past…and then for people who are doing genealogy work and people doing historical research, it gives them a wide window that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to…I’ve been in the profession for 17 years, and I’ve never been involved in a project like this before.”
This is an excerpt of the print article. For more on this story, read The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
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