Some things are just worth waiting for.

June 8 marked the beginning of a major project at the Asphodel Norwood Heritage Centre. After nearly a decade of fundraising and debate the scanning of the centre’s collection of old Norwood Register newspapers has officially begun.

This amazing and very large archive of village history has been stored and maintained by the Historical Society (now Committee) for decades, however with several of the papers dating back more than 140 years it was impossible to give the public access to the archive due to the fragile state of the paper itself. The idea to “digitize” the collection has and will continue to be the committee’s longest running project. After many years of discussion on how to best accomplish their objective the committee settled on an in house scanner and computer system. The special wide bed scanner and storage system was installed early in May. The papers which have been preserved as well as possible in special archival boxes, will be opened in sequence beginning with the oldest papers first. Each page will be physically placed into a protective clear sheet and scanned to create a high resolution rendering of each edition, this in turn will produce a searchable digital archive of the village’s history as recorded in the weekly paper.

The first issue of Norwood’s newspaper “The Register” was printed in December of 1870 and just to put that date in perspective; that was only three years after the Confederation of Canada.

The first edition was printed on a Washington Hand Press by the paper’s founder and editor Thomas........

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