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Sister weeklies put more than 200 years of news online

A digital archive featuring more than 200 years of news from three sister weeklies has gone live online.

Baylis Media has spent three years and £38,000 building the archive, which holds printed editions of the Maidenhead Advertiser from 1870, the Windsor Express from 1812 and the Slough Express from 1950.

It has been created by digitalising newspapers held on microfilm, processing more up-to-date editions of the papers held in PDF format and scanning the occasional bounded printed copy.

Baylis Media chairman Jason Baylis, who is also the company’s production and IT director, has managed the project.

Windsor 1812

He said: “We had a significant library of microfilm here at our main office and we thought it would be a fantastic resource for our community to have all this digitalised.

“We already had a fantastic online page-turning tool that was provided by a company called Pagesuite, and we had been using that for quite a few years for our online readers, so we’ve worked with them to develop and build an archive incorporating this page-turning service.”

Chief executive Jeremy Spooner, pictured, added: “We are very proud of our new online archive which allows the community that we have served for over 150 years the opportunity to take their own step back in time, for whatever reason that may be.

“Local newspapers have been the custodians of a community’s history through its print archives and this initiative allows us to share that archive with the public.”

4 comments

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  • November 6, 2019 at 10:03 am
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    Well done. brilliant idea as anyone slogging their way through microfilm will agree. These archives will be precious as many papers become a thing of the past.

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  • November 6, 2019 at 4:02 pm
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    Well done Baylis – completed with a lot less fanfare and expense than Archant’s Local Recall project, which now seems to be seriously behind schedule.

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  • November 7, 2019 at 10:58 am
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    Yes, a heartening bit of news. Will they charge to see the back numbers?

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  • November 7, 2019 at 11:08 am
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    Yes indeed @OneTimeSub and using their own money.

    Very well done Bayliss Media on creating such a useful and valuable facility.

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