Belleville Area District Library preserves area history week by week

It all started when Keith Bruder and his late wife Ginger were looking for genealogical information at a small library in Ohio.
Keith said the library surprised them by having its local newspaper on microfische instead of in the bulky bound volumes they found in other libraries.
The history the newspaper carried was available on the microfiche at the library. If the library burned down, it was still on the film preserved at the place the papers were put on the film.
Keith said Ginger wanted the same for Belleville, so it could preserve its history. They requested and the library received a grant from the Belleville Rotary Club’s Cozadd foundation to put all the local papers on microfiche.
At the time, besides the Independent, there was the Belleville Enterprise, The View, and other papers. They did them all, until the papers stopped publishing in their original local formats. The Enterprise now is available only on line with a group of newspapers and seldom is there a story about Belleville.
Keith said at the time all the papers cooperated, except the new owner of the Enterprise who wouldn’t loan copies of all the years so they could be microfiched. Years later, Bruder said he was able to get the missing years so all the years of the Enterprise are available up to the present when it went online. The Enterprise had published for about 140 years.
The Rotary foundation supported the heavy expense of getting all the newspapers on microfiche. Then, the library took over the cost of microfiching the Independent week by week at the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.
Amy Greschaw, head of adult services at the library, said not many people use the high-tech microfiche that was installed when the newly built library opened five years ago. She said she will demonstrate how to use it for anyone interested. It is located on the second floor of the library in the History Room where the Belleville Centennial Quilt is hanging.