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The Kalamazoo Gazette has amassed a collection of some 1,500 cubic feet dating back to the 1830s when the paper first started publishing. Recently, the MLive Media Group has decided to donate the Kalamazoo Gazette archives to Western Michigan University’s Archives and Regional History Collections – making the Gazette’s archives accessible to the public.

Dan Gaydou, president of MLive Media Group has stated, “Our sense of obligation to the community was to make sure that all of these precious artifacts and stories and pictures and varying kind of items that we have collected over the years get to a good place that would preserve them.”

Regional History Collections Curator Lynn Houghton expects the move will begin early June. When the archives make the move to East Hall, staff will begin cataloging the materials – a process that could take several months. Materials that are perceived to get the most public use will be housed in East Hall with the rest moving to off-site storage in one of WMU’s valley dormitories.

66 bound volumes of the Gazette dating back to 1934; 41 drawers of photo negatives; 40 cabinets of newspaper clippings; 98 card-file boxes and a collection of microfilm of the Gazette’s pages make up a portion of the largest collection Houghton’s department has ever taken possession of.

The Kalamazoo Gazette is the oldest continuously printing newspaper outside of Detroit and as Gaydou says, “We’ve got wonderful stories to tell.”

To learn more, please follow the link below:

MLIVE.COM – MLIVE DONATES KALMAZOO GAZETTE ARCHIVES TO WMU