TOLEDO – The Tama County Historical Society is excited to announce the successful completion of the next phase of its ongoing newspaper preservation and digitization project, making historic newspapers from the earliest days of Tama County to 1960 freely available online for the public to explore and research.

These newly digitized newspapers are now accessible at https://tamacounty.historyarchives.online. This significant milestone was made possible by the efforts of Advantage Preservation, a leader in historic preservation and digital archiving, and funded through private donations and a $5,000 grant from the Tama County Community Foundation.

This latest phase builds upon the success of previous digitization efforts, which began in 2018 with the digitization of Toledo newspapers (1873-1925), funded entirely by member donations. Phase 2 in 2019 expanded the project to include Traer newspapers (1874-1941), thanks to the support of the Traer Historical Museum, the Traer Community Foundation, and the Tama County Community Foundation. A generous memorial gift made it possible to digitize newspapers from Garwin, Le Grand, and early Tama, and in 2020, Phase 3 added papers from Tama, Dysart, Garwin, and Gladbrook to the collection.

The latest phase was led by Diane Caloud, Vice President of the Tama County Historical Society, who worked closely with Advantage Preservation to ensure the project’s continued success.

The next phase of this important preservation project will include digitizing newspaper titles through 1978, as well as microfilm copies of all titles up to the present day. These materials will be made available at the Historical Society’s genealogy library.

The Tama County Historical Society encourages anyone interested in supporting this ongoing project to consider making a donation. For more information or to contribute, please contact the society at 641-484-6767 or tamacountyhistory@gmail.com.