The J. Willard Marriott Library has reached a new milestone with the completion of the digitization project for the Park Record. The newspaper, which has covered Summit County since 1880 and was originally known as the Park Mining Record, is now part of the Utah Digital Newspapers archive.
The project also includes the digitization of the Summit County newspaper known as The Newspaper, which featured a substantial arts festival supplement during its publication from 1975 to 1983.
The success of the Park Record project involved community leadership and various funding sources. Sally Elliott, a community leader in Park City, was asked by Sandra Morrison, Executive Director of the Park City Historical Society and Museum, to lead the effort. Elliott recruited community members for fundraising.
Funding was provided by Adriane Juarez, Director of the Park City Library, and Dan Compton, Summit County Library Director, who also helped connect the project to the State Library. A grant of $10,000 was facilitated through the Utah Department for Heritage and Arts via the State Library. Additional support came from the Recreational, Arts, and Parks Cultural Tax (RAP), Rocky Mountain Power, and individual community contributors.
A key technical achievement in this project was the ability to ingest born-digital content, such as articles, photographs, and advertisements published online and in print. Previously, other papers in the archive had been scanned only from their paper origins.
The Park Record holds the longest continual run among 148 Utah newspaper titles in the archive. The digitized collection includes issues starting from 1881 through May 25-27, 2016. Efforts are ongoing to add more recent born-digital issues to keep pace with the paper's publishing.
Sally Elliott stated that while the Park Record had been digitized from 1881 to 1980, this recent project allows for more recent research and provides a pathway for future content through the Marriott Library's new technology.
