For several years, local Kewanee news has not been archived and preserved. For decades, the Kewanee Public Library staff faithfully archived the local newspaper, ensuring that it would be a record for future generations, but when the Star Courier stopped publishing local news, the library archiving fell by the wayside.

For the past six months, The Kewanee Voice board chair has been working to find a solution to the problem that would ensure that Kewanee history was preserved in a meaningful way. TD Welch reached out to the library’s director, Cynthia Maxwell, about how the online news website could become the archived newspaper of record.

After hitting several road bumps, including formatting issues, Welch was thinking it was time to give up. But an email from a company called NewsBank, Inc. to The Kewanee Voice inbox provided a much needed solution to the problem.

NewsBank has been the premiere provider of the world’s largest repository of reliable information for more than 50 years. “NewsBank’s comprehensive resources have met the diverse research needs of public libraries, colleges and universities, schools, military and government libraries and professionals around the world,” the website reads.

VP of Business Development and Media Sources for NewsBank, Andy Reichert, emailed the nonprofit online news organization inquiring if the publisher would be interested in having the company archive the Voice. The process is free and, in fact, NewsBank pays royalties to publications when its archived material is accessed.

After some investigation including talking to other online publishers who have utilized the service, the Voice board approved entering into a contract with NewsBank. Several weeks ago, the company began the process of scraping the website data back to when it first launched. Sometime within the next 30 days, the company will release the content into a product that will be available for the public.

The good news is that the Kewanee Public Library already subscribes to NewsBank, so patrons looking for older articles from The Kewanee Voice will be able to use the library computer lab to access them and even print them.

Library Director Maxwell said the partnership formed between the library and The Kewanee Voice will allow the general public to have access to the publication’s archived material.

“NewsBank.com is one of many databases the library has to offer. The library is happy that our local history will be preserved for the future and that our community will have access to that information. We look forward to assisting the public with their searches on NewsBank.com,” she said, adding that anyone who requires prints can work with staff to ensure they get the exact material they want to print from The Kewanee Voice.

“This is an exciting time to know our local history is being preserved for future generations,” said Maxwell.