Titus County's only collection of tangible, semi-permanent, and detailed history is contained in its newspapers. They are invaluble if you intend to study the county's history, or likewise if you want to trace your family's genealogy.
They contain detailed stories of each year's happenings, and give you insight into how the community felt about issues of the day. This cannot be gleaned from government records or other sources.
If you're researching your family's genealogy, the newspapers contain your relatives' obituaries and possibly other stories about their lives.
A collection of early Mt. Pleasant newspapers in paper form was once stored in the basement of the Mt. Pleasant Public Library well before the current director and staff came on the scene. Unfortunately, the library basement flooded many years ago and the "paper" newspapers got soaked. Rather than attempting to dry them, they were thrown away and this part of our history is gone forever. There were no other copies.
Additionally, in 1981 many of the old Mt. Pleasant Daily Times dating from 1923 to the 1960s were microfilmed. Unfortuantely, the work was very poor. Creased pages were not straightened before some pages were filmed, so there is no way to correct them. Additionally, in a single reel, one page will be very overexposed and the next page underexposed making the reel's tonal contrast very inconsistent and hard to work with.
To make matters worse, the library recieved one set of negative (master) reels and a second set of positive (black on white) reels. Instead of storing the negative reels in a safe so they could be duplicated as problems arose with the positive reels, both were put out for public use.
I have no doubt that Mary and I are the first to ever go through each page of each and every roll of film since it was created. When we began researching the microfilm, we also found that much of it has been scratched, and several rolls have hard creases and tears in them. Others are broken.
Titus County is in real danger of losing almost all of its earliest history in the form of microfilmed Mt. Pleasant Daily Times newspapers dating from late 1923 into the 1960s.
When we brought this to the attention of Library Director Lori Rigney, she was not aware of the situation that she had inherited and agreed that something needs to be done now to preserve what we have left.
We have been working for the last year catalogging each roll's condition and noting any damage we find. We are also studying the problem to determine the best course of action needed to preserve the information. At present, it appears that two things need to be done.
First, a copy needs to be made of the film to preserve it long-run. According to our research, the shelf life of old microfilm is 100 years, and new microfilm has a shelf life of up to 600 years if properly stored. Our existing film was not properly stored.
Second, we are researching having the film digitized so that Library patrons can use the digital images, not the film. This wil not only be more efficient, but hopefully the film images can be enhanced as they are digitized. By having digital images, backups can be made easily. The images may be viewed on different computers and possibly even put on the internet at a later date so they will be accessible anywhere there's an internet connection.
To date, we have not been able to locate the "vault masters," a pristine copy of the original film that the company that does the work usually preserves for later reproduction.
At this time, it appears that the only way to preserve the best images possible will be to digitize them one frame at a time.
In addition to the Library's microfilm, the Mt. Pleasant Daily Tribune has a microfilm archive as well as "paper" newspapers dating from the 1940s to present. It is critical to completing the story of Mt. Pleasant and Titus County that these be copied and preserved, too.
Preserving the film and papers will be an expensive project. The City of Mt. Pleasant has budgeted some money toward the project, and Tribune Editor Bobby Palmer has agreed to contribute. Some small grants may be available, and we are researching those. However, much more money will be needed.
If you or a civic organization or club that you are a member of is interested in helping, please contact Robert Turner through this website or Lori Rigney at the Mt. Pleasant Public Library.
Because the project is a large one, it is important that we begin soon. Due to the money available to work with and the project's cost, it will take several years to complete. If we wait too long, the film may be in too poor condition to duplicate or digitize.
