SALISBURY — An effort to preserve Salisbury and Rowan County history called the Salisbury Post Morgue Preservation Project is seeking volunteers to assist with scanning and indexing the newspaper’s numerous archives.

Gretchen Beilfuss Witt, supervisor of the Edith M. Clark History Room at the Rowan Public Library headquarters in Salisbury, estimated that there are approximately 19,000 hours worth of work in the project, with roughly 88,000 envelopes of newspaper clippings that require archiving. 

Referring to a paper’s archives as the morgue is older newsroom jargon. 

“A long time ago, before there was Google, if someone prominent in the area died, reporters would have had to come up with stuff for an article or obituary,” Witt said.

That’s where those archived clips came in handy and where the term morgue originated.

Witt’s group is going from file cabinet to file cabinet to carefully scan and subsequently index the files in a sorted method that allows future visitors to narrow down their searches with a degree of precision not possible without the group’s efforts.

“We are scanning the entire contents, but we are working on indexing them at the same time, so that if you came in here and said, ‘Do you have anything on ‘George Good?’ I could go to the people, pull up the Gs, and find it,” Witt said. 

Grants have propped up the project, but Witt acknowledged that those funds were not ever-flowing and that volunteers would be needed in the interim while organizers applied for future grant provisions. 

Witt explained that for a lot of the inquisitive minds, it’s not always about the articles. Sometimes, they might be looking for a photograph. 

“The photographs are the most exciting things for us,” Witt said. “It’s not just the articles; it’s the physical photographs and other ephemera that is in there.”

She pointed to a thesis written about the desegregation of Salisbury City Schools that was submitted to the Post for publication. 

“I had someone looking for information about that time, and I was able to help that patron find that information,” Witt said. “Those kinds of things are really exciting.”

Who makes a good candidate?

“Anybody who is familiar with scanning (would be a good candidate),” Witt said. “You need to have some computer skills since you are going to be creating a folder to compile the information that you are scanning.”

Witt added that candidates should be older than 16. 

Work can take place pretty much any day of the week. 

“We try to set up a schedule so people know what they are doing,” Witt said. “It does not have to be at headquarters. It can be at the south branch or the west branch.”

The Rowan Public Library East Branch does not have a scanner at this time. 

Volunteers will have to go through the county’s volunteer application process. 

“You have to apply through the county and indicate to the county you are interested in working on this particular project,” Witt said. 

Anyone with additional questions should email Witt at gretchen.witt@rowancountync.gov or call the library at 704-216-8232.