After its official launch Wednesday night, Digitize Habersham is now available at no cost to anyone who wants to learn more about the rich history of Habersham County.
Digitize Habersham is an indexed, searchable “gold mine” of Habersham County newspapers going back to 1857.
The collection of online archives is a project of Habersham Education & Research, in cooperation with The Northeast Georgian. As the project proceeds, Habersham Education & Research president and founder Peter Madruga plans to add books, memoirs, photos and public records, including city meeting minutes and historic company documents, “to make this a one-stop shop for anybody trying to do research in Habersham’s history,” he said.
“There’s a gold mine of information in Habersham County,” Madruga said. “It’s in our public library, it’s in our courthouse, it’s in people’s homes, it’s in their bookcases. But you can’t get to it very easily.”
Digitize Habersham seeks to solve that problem with its searchable archives.
Currently Madruga is digitizing newspapers from 1857 through 1957, and he hopes to complete more in the future. Available editions include The Clarkesville Advertiser, The Demorest Times, The Northeast Georgian and The Tri-County Advertiser.
Madruga got the historic newspaper pages as microfilm from The University of Georgia. Since copyright law allows free use from 1927 and earlier, with the cooperation of The Northeast Georgian, he was also able to digitize an additional 30 years’ worth of newspaper editions, going to 1957.
The “spark” for Digitize Habersham came from research Madruga did for other Habersham Education & Research projects, including an archive of the mayors of Habersham County, the “Hey Habersham”’ podcast, a “Virtual Veterans Wall of Honor,” and the documentary, “Cornelia: A Train Town.” Those projects and Digitize Habersham can be found at habershamhistory.org.
“To support those projects, it took extensive research, and we started collecting photos,” he said. “This was the spark for Digitize Habersham. As we collected and archived more and more newspaper articles and photos, we realized we had something that could be used as a tool, not just for ourselves but for the community at large.”
Ordering reels of microfilm and storing the pages on hard drives and online is not free. The project costs about 0.40 cents for each newspaper page digitized. Currently, about 20,000 pages are complete, and another 100,000 pages are available through UGA. Because of the cost, Habersham Education & Research is seeking financial donations to total about $40,000, as well as volunteers to help.
“We need donations from individuals, corporations and municipalities to purchase the content, and we need volunteers to make this process go faster,” Madruga said.
Habersham Education and Research is a 501(c)(3) organization, so donations are tax deductible.
Habersham County teacher, Tiffany Collins, who teaches 7th grade social studies at North Habersham Middle School, attended the kickoff, and said she’s excited about the tool.
“It’s impressive to see the knowledge they have available to us,” Collins said.
Though Collins primarily teaches African and Southeast Asian history, she realizes local history is important.
“I try to incorporate local history,” she said. “I hope I can use this in my classroom. Every Friday we do ‘Today in History,’ so we look at something happened in the past, and I’d love to a ‘Habersham Day in History.’”
Another attendee, Libba Beaucham, director of the Northeast Georgia History Center’s Cottrell Digital Studio in Gainesville, said Digitize Habersham is “super exciting.”
“I am the type of history nerd who will read all the social columns and advertising (in old newspapers), because you get so engrossed in it,” Beaucham said.
“Honestly, I think this will be a really cool project for local historians, and the younger people too. It almost feels like you’re a detective sometimes.”
The archives for Digitize Habersham can be found at habershamhistory.org/archives. Each page in the archive is a searchable pdf file.