Last week we reviewed the historic newspaper resources available for researchers at the Pekin Public Library. As we noted, the microfilms of the Pekin Daily Times (1914-2018) are the core of the library’s local history collection of newspapers. Besides the Pekin Times microfilms, the library’s website provides access for Pekin Public Library card hardholders to numerous newspapers via NewsBank, including the Pekin Daily Times from 2001 to the present (text only) or from 2019 to the present (full images of each newspaper page). More recently, Newspapers.com digitized the Pekin Daily Times from 1983 to the present, but that database is accessible only to paid subscribers.
Over the years at “From the History Room,” I have had many occasions to share Pekin Daily Times articles and photographs from the library’s microfilm collection. Microfilming old newspapers and other records was a preferred means of preservation during the 20th century and early 21st century, because when stored correctly microfilm reels can last hundreds of years. However, microfilm has now been superseded by digital archiving methods, and the production of new microfilm ceased worldwide in 2018. Although digital collections have a much more limited lifespan in comparison to microfilm due to the gradual wearing out of digital media, nevertheless digitizing newspapers is superior to microfilm in terms of ease of access via internet databases (such as those at Newspapers.com and NewsBank).
The Pekin Daily Times prior to 1983 has not yet been digitized, but hopefully will be in the coming years. Till then, researchers will need to visit the Pekin Public Library or the Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society to do in-person research using a microfilm reader machine. Not as convenient as being able to search an online database from the comfort of one’s own home, to be sure.
Another drawback to microfilm is the loss of detail and resolution not only in text but especially in photographs. Here is a sample of a digital image obtained from the library’s Pekin Daily Times microfilm collection using the library’s microfilm reader:
As microfilm images go, the above image is not bad. However, some of the library’s patrons who have searched through older years of the Pekin Daily Times in our microfilm collection will know that some of the earliest available microfilm reels (1914 to circa 1935) have darkened with time, especially at the edges. In addition, there is a big difference in image quality between the larger 33 mm reels and the smaller 16 mm reels — and for a few years, our collection has only the cheaper-to-produce 16 mm format. Image quality can be a challenge particularly for the reels from the 1930s and 1940s, during the trouble economic times of the Great Depression of World War II. The library’s microfilm reader is a very remarkable and capable machine, though, and is able to compensate for those disadvantages far better than the Local History Room’s older models of microfilm readers could.
Even so, there is only so much that a microfilm reader can do. The original transfer of the newspaper from print to microfilm inevitably caused the loss of resolution and fine detail, with a flattening of contrast and increasing the darkness of shadows in photos on the newspaper page. That drawback to microfilm can sometimes be overcome, though, thanks to the Pekin Public Library’s Pekin Daily Times photo negative archive.
When the Daily Times moved from the old Zerwekh Building on Fourth Street in 2012, the newspaper donated its extensive photo negative archive (covering years from the late 1950s to the early 2000s) to the library. Most of the negatives are black-and-white, of course. This archive is not public accessible and we cannot at this time honor research queries for such images, but for the purpose of occasional “From the History Room” article, sometimes I have been able to make a digital reproduction of certain images from the photo negative archive. As an example, I was able to locate the original negative of Dan Hostetler’s photo shown above that ran on the front page of the 18 July 1984 Pekin Daily Times. Compare it to the microfilm version:
In the years ahead, the library hopes to be able to make more of the photo negative archive accessible to researchers.
