Roger Whittle, The Watertown Current in Featured News, March 19, 2025

The digitizing of past editions of the Watertown Public Opinion by the Codington County Historical Society will continue, thanks to a $30,000 grant from the Watertown Area Community Foundation.

Christi Lickei, director of the Codington County Heritage Museum, is spearheading the project, along with the Historical Society board. The project began last summer. With the help of the Watertown Regional Library and an earlier $30,000 grant from the Community Foundation, all microfilm of Public Opinion editions from 1887 to 1954 have been digitized and are available to be searched online free of charge by anyone.

The library has 600 spools of microfilm of past Public Opinion editions, and 176 have been scanned and digitized so far. Later editions of the paper are larger with more pages, so fewer editions are stored on each spool. Lickei is uncertain how many years of newspapers can be scanned with the latest WACF grant, but it should be another 30 years or so.

Old editions of the Public Opinion are probably the best source of Watertown’s history. As the area’s leading source of information until recent years, the Public Opinion recorded every birth, death, and major news event for more than 100 years.

“Since the time I started at the Historical Society, I’ve wanted to scan the newspapers, but that seemed to be a huge project,” Lickei told the Watertown Current.

Scanning individual pages of old newspapers is both costly and time-consuming, but scanning microfilm is more manageable.

“The cost of scanning the microfilm is pennies compared to taking high-resolution photos of each page,” Lickei said.

The scanning of the microfilm is being done by Advantage Archives of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a company that focuses on the preservation and digital accessibility of historical collections and documents so that a community’s history is available for current and future generations.

Editions of the Public Opinion from its beginning in 1887 through 1954 are available now online at https://watertownlib.historyarchives.online/home. Later editions will be available after this round of scanning is completed.

They can be searched by keyword and read or printed free of charge from any computer with internet access.

Preserving Watertown’s History >>> Members of the Watertown Area Community Foundation and the Codington County Historical Society boards gathered to discuss the progress of the project with last year’s $30,000 grant and the next steps with this year’s additional $30,000 grant. Pictured are, front row, from left, WACF Executive Director Cammie Mengwasser, WACF board member Dr. Jeff Danielsen, CCHS board members Sharese Jensen and Helen Howey, and Codington County Heritage Museum Director Christy Lickei. Back row: WACF board member Charlie Ewalt, Joel Vockrodt, who serves on both boards, and CCHS board members Doug Allen, Roger Whittle, and Tim Oviatt.