It’s almost mind-blowing to think about, but The Community Press has been publishing weekly uninterrupted since 1908. That’s four years before the Titanic sank! In that time, we’ve amassed a large library of content. So, where is it?
2024 – Current
Subscribing monthly to our Patreon (click here), or purchasing individual collections by year gives you instant access to the years 2024, 2025, and current 2026 editions.
2006 – Current
AWSOM Archives and offline hard drives house our digital library from the past 20 years. Currently, the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association together with Local Ink is developing a service to make these archives, as well as the archives of dozens of other Alberta newspapers, available to the public.
In the meantime, files are available by request, as most if not all of the files are available on external hard drives. Email production.cp@gmail.com
1908 – Current
While in various states of condition, we have books for most years our newspaper has published. With a few gaps in between, we are still getting bound books made that contain the entire year’s worth of issues. We also have books of the Alliance Enterprise. These are all viewable by appointment in our Killam office and may not leave the premises. Email newsroom.cp@gmail.com to arrange viewing.
Additionally, microfilms of our paper from approximately 1908 – 1983 are viewable at the Alberta Legislature Library and/or Provincial Archives of Alberta in Edmonton. Our goal is to eventually assign an employee to retrieve these microfilm and convert them to digital files. But as a small business, this would require considerable time and cost.
Sedgewick Sentinel Digital Archives
The Community Press was initially known as The Sedgewick Sentinel and published its first edition on July 16, 1908. It is written online that the Sentinel “became a part of” The Community Press. That’s not the case. The Sentinel, owned by A. L. Eastly, ABSORBED other papers in the depression era and changed its name to represent a county-wide publication. The Press you read today is entirely the same publication. We only acknowledge its lineage from the first editions of the Sentinel, and consider all other town papers from that era as being long defunct.
We are excited, through our Patreon page, for the first time ever, to begin to sell viewings of digital scans of the Sentinel. We are currently in the process of uploading 1908 – 1929, using scans from original Sentinels that were provided to the Provincial archives since inception. Click here to purchase access to the collection or individual volumes, or click here to subscribe monthly to receive full access to the collection. Cancellable anytime.
Hiccups along the way
• At one time, AWSOM Archives was accessible to the public and the provider of our e-edition service. In around 2017, it was the subject of a ransomware attack. Alberta publishers ultimately chose not to pay the absurd price the hackers were demanding, and allowed the entire online version of the infrastructure to be wiped. Thankfully all offline storage survived and is fully restored.
• Issuu.com housed a large catalogue of digital archives from about 2017 to 2025. However, due to constant price increases and the inability to sell subscriptions that provided access to past editions, we have officially abandoned the platform as an e-edition partner.
• Unreliable external hard drives. Keeping large libraries of content is a race against technology. There was a time when 2006 – 2013 existed on 2 different computers and 2 different external hard drives, and in a 6 month span, 3 of the 4 suffered major hardware failure and files were lost. We are confident that the files now exist in enough places to be recoverable, but technology is never a certainty.
• Unrealized digitization projects. Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, individual publishers, and some universities had multiple talks about digitizing all of the microfilm available in provincial libraries. However, despite repeated attempts to launch an initiative, too many obstacles prevented such a project from getting off the ground. U of C and Peel do maintain and provide some digital catalogues from microfilm of publications across the province, but have mostly focused on cataloguing defunct titles with only a few exceptions.
Why do we still charge for digital access to past assets?
In a world where everything online seems free, we can see why this question is sometimes asked. The answer, The Community Press has never been free. Since inception as the Sentinel, it has been subscription based. There is a TREMENDOUS cost involved in producing a weekly publication and charging a small fee for readership has always helped recoup that. Additionally, paywalling past content helps protect our ownership of that content. If we allowed all of our files to be freely uploaded and distributed into the ether, our ability to control and steward over a century of local content would be eroded and bad actors could creep in.