Digitization of Historical Newspapers

In 2010, Plainfield Public Library received a New Jersey Historical Commission Special Project grant that allowed us to continue to digitize* some of our historical newspapers. Our last project, the digitization of the The Daily Press (1887-1911) and the Plainfield Daily Press (1912-1916), was a great success. The 2010 grant provided the funds to digitize the rest of our early newspapers, with the exception of the Courier News. The papers are searchable from inside the Library. Newspapers that were digitized date back to 1837; titles include:

The Plainfield Union (1837-1852) and its continuation The Central New Jersey Times (1868-1880), are two of Plainfield’s oldest newspapers. The Constitutionalist (1871-1911) is the predecessor of the Plainfield Daily Press which was digitized on our last newspaper grant.*  The Plainfield Record (1884-1918) This title was rediscovered interspersed within other newspapers on the microfilm reels. As far as we know, we are the only library holding this title. The Evening News (1884-1885) and its continuations The Plainfield Evening News (1885-1894) and The Plainfield Courier (1890-1894) round out our newspaper holdings.

* The digitization work was completed by Innovative Document Imaging (IDI).