The City of Windsor, Windsor Public Library (WPL) and Postmedia, the parent company of the Windsor Star, have announced an agreement that will make Windsor Public Library the caretaker of about 100 years of local history.
The Windsor Star has covered Windsor and Essex County since 1890 as a daily and 1860 as a weekly paper.
The Windsor Star archives have always been stored by Postmedia and in recent decades, accessible only to their journalists, but the recent sale of the former Starway printing plant made an archive move necessary.
WPL will take ownership of the archives.
Kieran McKenzie, vice-chair of the WPL board and ward 9 city councillor says it's staggering to think of the importance of the documented history that The Windsor Star has undertaken for over 100 years in our community.
"The talks have been ongoing for a number of months. I don't think there was ever any questions as to whether or not the archive was going to be preserved by one entity or another, but I think the city the most appropriate body through the public library system to host and to preserve and have stewardship over those archives moving forward."
He says for now the archives will be stored in the Paul Martin building, which houses the temporary location of the Central branch.
"Those archives will be housed somewhere in that space. There will be public access available eventually. There's a cataloguing process that needs to be undertaken and then we'll have to look at where specifically within that space where it's appropriate to have public access to. All of those issues needed to be sorted out."
Craig Pearson, managing editor, The Windsor Star says the archives were kept in old school metal filling cabinets.
He believes about 75 cabinets were sent to the city.
"They were all filed over the years just in file folders. So you'd go to police, for instance, Windsor police, you could find a file photo on that. Willistead Manor. Whatever you want to look at. Queen Elizabeth visting Windsor. We have some stuff not just Queen Elizabeth visting the area but Martin Luther King, prime ministers and much much more."
He says some of the archives are digitized but not all.
"And that's one of the things that the Windsor Public Library has pledged to undertake and that is to digitize the collection, which will take some time. But once they're all digitized then the community will be able to share in them even more so I can't wait for that to happen."
The archives include microfilm, photos, negatives and compact discs (CDs) dating back about 100 years.
There are also bound newspapers and an envelope of historical circulation data from 1917.
-With files from AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show w/ guest host Jon Liedtke