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About SmallTownPapers®
SmallTownPapers is a leading
solution provider for publishers of America’s 5000 small market newspapers.
Working with publishers nationwide, the Seattle-based company digitally
preserves current and archive editions and provides searchable online access
to the newspapers. Additionally, SmallTownPapers provides millions of news
consumers across the country with access to real-time news and information
from small town America.
Newspapers in small towns
historically confined their archives to bound volumes tucked away in
storage. Few were able to afford the luxury of even microfilming their
archive editions. Locating an article from the past required the
time-consuming activity of traveling to the town and physically searching
through often fragile, bound newspaper pages. Additionally, publishers were
faced with the loss of the written record of their community history if the
single bound volumes were ever damaged or destroyed.
Consumers, researchers,
genealogists, historians, government and legal professionals are among those
interested in accessing the unique, historical information held in the pages
of small town newspapers. In May 2000, SmallTownPapers founder Paul Jeffko
launched a program which would provide publishers with the digital
technology necessary to preserve and open the door to their historical
archives.
SmallTownPapers scans and
processes images of the newspaper pages directly from the printed page than
uses powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to create a
high-quality, online searchable archive. The result is a completely
searchable digital newspaper which appears just as the pages were originally
printed.
Today, more than 300
newspapers from 46 states can be accessed and searched through
SmallTownPapers. The archive, containing editions dating as far back as the
1800s, continues to grow as publishers discover SmallTownPapers in their
search for comprehensive digital archive solutions.
In the spring of 2006, the
company enhanced its services by launching the first news service dedicated
exclusively to the wide distribution of real-time news and information from
America’s small towns. SmallTownPapers News Service (STPNS) provides small
market newspaper publishers with the ability to safely distribute their
local content to millions of news consumers through defined agreements with
content aggregation organizations. STPNS is the leading source for small
town news offering feeds of news and feature articles, photographs, sports
statistics, vital statistics, bid and legal notices.
For more information about
the programs and services offered by SmallTownPapers, call 206-938-9073 or
email
info@smalltownpapers.com.
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Washington Newspaper Publishers Association