The Newspaper Files

The files that make up this archive were digitally scanned from microfilm. Most of these papers no longer exist in paper format, so we relied on the microfilm copies owned by the Carroll County Public Library and The Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, MD. to complete this project.

You will notice that some of these papers are not in the best of shape. In most cases this is due to the many years of microfilm usage by our customers, but many of the older papers were filmed many years after their publication and were deteriorating before they could be filmed.

We contracted with The Crowley Company of Frederick, MD to scan the microfilm to PDF format so that we could build a full-text searchable archive. The microfilm was scanned in grayscale at a high resolution to capture as much detail as possible. This resulted in larger files, but this means that you will be able to better read and print most of the pages. The Crowley Company also indexed the full-text of each paper in the background of each PDF document. This is what allows us to search these documents. However, you will notice that there will be odd spellings and characters in some of the file descriptions when you view your search results. The automated scanners do their best to interpret the text on the page, however since we are dealing with a worn copy of original newsprint, the text can sometimes be difficult to decipher and the scanning software makes its best guess as to what it sees.

The archived newspapers contain only the primary pages of the newspapers. Most inserts (including TV listings, advertisements and coupons) have been removed to help reduce the size of the files. Only inserts that were generated by the Carroll County Times or contain historical information about Carroll County have been included with the newspapers. Advertisements that are a part of the regular newspaper pages have not been removed.

There are also many papers that are missing from the collection. Either they were not available for scanning or they were missed when filmed. We have done our best to include every newspaper that we could currently access. If you own papers that are not in this collection, we would love to add them to the archive to provide better access for our customers. Send us a note through our Contact form and we will work with you to make arrangements to digitize the papers.

If you encounter any problems with opening the documents, please contact us via our Contact form. We will do our best to correct any problems with the files.