Volunteers sought to sort newspaper collection

The Humboldt County Historical Society will hold workdays Saturday and Sunday at the Timber Heritage Association’s shops at 930 Vance Ave. in Samoa to organize a large collection of historical newspapers, including copies of the Humboldt Standard, Humboldt Beacon and the Times-Standard.

Workdays will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Volunteers are needed to help sort, organize, label, catalog and box materials for ease of storage and further processing and use. Cataloging will also include computer data entry and the creation of an electronic database detailing the range of dates represented in the newspaper materials.

Processing and cataloging of these materials will allow the Historical Society to develop an inventory and plan for future digitization, with the goal of filling gaps in the existing digital and microfilm record.

The newspapers — which span much of the 20th century — were once part of the Times-Standard’s physical archive.

They were acquired by the Humboldt County Historical Society in June 2020, shortly after the Times-Standard began being printed in Chico and the archive could no longer be housed at its then-Sixth Street location.

Volunteers and staff from the Clarke Historical Museum and the Humboldt County Historical Society picked up the newspapers and the Timber Heritage Association agreed to temporarily store the collection at its Samoa facility. Pacific Paper Co. of Eureka donated the boxes to better organize and store materials from this collection.

For more information, call the Humboldt County Historical Society at 707445-4342.