From Confederation to the Great War: P.E.I. digital newspaper collection expanding

P.E.I.'s digital newspaper collection is pushing further back into the past with the help of new federal funding.

Islandnewspapers.ca had more than a million page views on its current collection last year, which includes more than 70 years from the Charlottetown Guardian, starting in 1890, along with other short-run papers from the 19th century.

With a grant from the National Heritage Digitization Strategy worth $45,685, the UPEI project will add editions of the Examiner, from the mid-1840s through the 1900s and L'impartial, a Tignish Acadian newspaper, from 1893 to 1915.

"What we want to do is keep pushing further back, to tell people about more of the past," said UPEI librarian Simon Lloyd.

"Through the 1860s and into the early 1870s you've got the Confederation debates, there's railroad building, the end of absentee landlordism, the boom and then the bust of shipbuilding and fur farming, and right into the leadup to The Great War. So it's pretty active time in Island history to say the least and we're glad it's going to be represented online."

The money will go to a team of three or four people who will scan and upload the newspaper pages, and make them searchable. The work includes close to 35,000 pages just for the Examiner.

The project is one of 21 recently announced by the National Heritage Digitization Strategy, worth a total of $1 million.

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With files from Laura Chapin