On Monday, The Columbian’s digital archives became available to the public for the first time, allowing users to search with keywords and date ranges.
The archives, available at columbian.newspapers.com, open up a new world for historians, students and curious Clark County residents who may want to search for their own names, an ancestor’s name, addresses, or a date of a specific paper or an event.
“The digital newspaper archives are a really great resource,” said Donna Sinclair, history professor at Washington State University Vancouver. “They bring life to the past.”
Historians and students previously had to use microfilm or microfiche projectors to scan through each roll of film, a slow and inefficient way to find information without a specific date of an event.
Sinclair, who teaches history classes at WSUV, said that the online archives will save historians and students time, opening up new ways for them to discover stories.
Other archives projects