LW newspaper is being preserved
LW HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Thirty-six years of the Golden Rain News—from 1963 to June 1999—were released on newspapers.com in July 2022, according to Leisure World Historical Society President Margaret Gillon in a report to the GRF Board Aug. 3. She has been leading the effort to digitize 60 years of the weekly newspaper that serves LW on behalf of the Historical Society and is happy to report that 59,197 pages, the first 36 years, are now accessible online.
At the Nov. 23 GRF Board meeting, an agreement between the GRF and Ancestry.com/Newspapers.com allowed the online newspaper archive to digitize Historical Society microfilm for free in exchange for exclusive publication of the digital copies made from the microfilm for three years.
Because the files are digitized and the content has been made searchable with OCR software, digital copies can be easily searched for names and events.
Shareholders with relatives who once lived in LW will be able to search for articles about their families. Researchers will be able to review a detailed record of events in the LW community as it grew and matured, Gillon told the board.
Just this month, the Historical Society was able to find 1960s-era articles about astronomer Cora Burwell for an author in England who is writing Burwell’s biography.
Newspapers.com requires a subscription to use and at this time, the Leisure World Library doesn’t have one.
“Hopefully the LW Library will obtain a subscription in the future,” Gillon said. “The Leisure World Genealogy Club has a subscription to newspapers.com that can be used on Genealogy Library computers in Clubhouse 3 by club members.”
The newspaper microfilm ended in June 1999. The Golden Rain News didn’t start publishing a digital edition until August 2010.
This leaves 11 years of newspapers that don’t have microfilm or digital copies. The Historical Society’s next project is to borrow paper copies of the Golden Rain News for these 11 years that are archived at UCI and have them microfilmed so they can also be digitized through newspapers.com. The Historical Society is currently seeking funding in the amount of $5,900 to pay for the microfilming project.
“The Historical Society is very excited that our early newspapers are now searchable and available on the Internet,” Gillon said. “We thank the 2021 Golden Rain Board for green lighting this project when the Historical Society brought it to the board last year.” —from the Historical Society
