The Wait Is Over; Now We #StartArchiving

Why it's taken so long, and how things are about to move really fast.

It’s been two years and nine months since I first talked about digitally archiving old Nigerian newspapers. Now, it’s time to actually do the thing. 

Our scanner, funded entirely by volunteers and donors, has finally arrived. It’s time to start archiving. 

Here’s How We’re Digitising 5 Decades Of Papers:

1. We’re scanning newspapers from January 1960 till December 2010. That’s 18,627 days of scanning at least one newspaper per day.
   
   We begin on Apr 17, 2023, and if you stick around on Instagram and Twitter, you’ll catch our daily updates on our progress, including photos of papers we’re currently scanning.
   
   👉🏾 Our most critical to-do here is: Onboard a full-time Archiving Associate.
   👉🏾 What we need from you: Know someone who’s obsessed with looking at old papers, and cataloguing everything? Send this to them.
   

2. We’re closing partnerships with 10 publishers. Currently, we’ve gotten permission to archive one newspaper; PM News. We have nine more to go. We can start archiving on the 17th of April because a volunteer, Lade, made one introduction, and a key player on the team, Ruby, covered the legal base.
   👉🏾 Our most critical to-do here is: Close more partnerships with legacy newspapers.
   👉🏾 What we need from you: We’ve made a list of newspapers here, so if you know any decision makers we should be talking to – a publisher or someone with that level of authority – please holler.
   

3. These papers need a home, and we’re building one on the internet. We’re going to make a web experience that makes it easy for you to find these newspapers, read, and share them.
   

4. We’re raising >$60k over the next year.
   To make 1-3 happen, it’s going to cost a lot of money. Volunteers push us forward, but we’ll need full-time people who can drive this till the end, and bring all of it to life.
   
   👉🏾Our most critical to-do is: We need to raise $23k over the course of April. This gives us a sizeable runway to set up a team to start archiving. 

   Currently, we’ve raised $365, 1.6% of our goal. 
   

   👉🏾What we need from you: Your donations; even better if you set up a recurring donation. Beyond donations, if you know how to help us close this fundraiser faster, please hit me up by email or on Twitter.

   It really did take a village to come this far. 

   I took a break from writing this to count how many people have directly contributed to bringing this project to this point. From dishing advice, to lifting boxes, and sending money, and actually going out to look for the newspapers, they did it all. 

   So, thank you Blessing, Aisha, another Aisha, and another Aisha, Esther, Oshomah, Ted, Cynthia; who literally insisted this project actually start, Farouq, the other Faruq, Ruby and Olariike; for the persistence in the past year, Derin, Tosin, Fatimah, Uzoamaka, Kola, E, Tomiwa, Allen, Dozie, Kayode, Latte, Caleb, Temie, Ore, GB, Ope, Opemipo, Tobi, Muqhtar, Abiodun, Fisayo, Olamilekan, Yemisi, Temi, Tobi, Opeyemi, Goodman, Amina, Stanley, Ayodeji, Morayo, Victoria, Uloma, Matthew, Ayoola, Edward, Mourad, Chris, Sola, Precious, Wendy, Seyi, Yinka, Adewunmi, Damilare, Sada, Segun, Eloho, SI, Eruke, the dozen anons, and Lindsey for lending your voice. 

   Thank you, to all of them, and everyone else who’s going to power this project through its next phase. 

The next update will land in your inbox May 5, 2023. Till then, see you on Twitter!