For 50 years, The Hellenic Chronicle has been the primary source of information about events in the Greek-American community.
Through its weekly coverage, the Chronicle has covered topics ranging from archdiocesan expansion to cultural organizations, as well as the professional success and personal celebrations of individuals and families.
The newspaper has been closed for almost 20 years and, until now, its historical content was barely accessible to the public. The only ways to access the content are either to manually browse the microfiche at the Boston Public Library or to browse the deteriorated archival pages in bound volumes at the Archbishop Iakovos Library on the school’s campus in Theology from Hellenic College-Holy Cross in Brookline, MA.
But these records deteriorated rapidly over time, and as they crumble, so does the important cultural history contained within their cumulative 54,000 pages documenting decades of an immigrant community’s journey in America. also.
“They literally crumble like phyllo dough left on the kitchen counter,” said Nancy Agris Savage, former editor-in-chief. told the Boston Herald in an interview. “The Greek-American community has just exploded in the United States and its history is on the verge of disappearing if we don’t do something about it.”
Savage, who is the daughter of Hellenic Chronicle founder Peter Agris, is leading a fundraising campaign to raise $50,000 to fully digitize all of the newspaper’s 50-year-old archives. She said those funds would cover all digitization expenses — and would be less than half of what it would cost to hire a data preservation company.
Savage is leading this effort in conjunction with the Boston-based Alpha Omega Council, and their shared goal is to preserve the Chronicle’s content and make it easily accessible for future generations.
If they reach the fundraising goal, the duo plans to create a searchable database that would offer high-speed search, retrieval and manipulation of all Hellenic Chronicle articles and photographs in JPG and PDF formats .
The content at stake? Over 54,000 pages, all of which will be lost if not digitized and hosted online.
The video below outlines the details of the campaign.
More than 25% of issues of the Hellenic Chronicle from the 1950s to 1960s remain missing and various articles have been removed over the years. Savage encourages anyone in possession of such copies to send him an email directly.
“It was the first weekly journalistic vehicle that was American in form, but Greek in substance,” she said. “This is a rich archive of the coming of age of the Greeks in America. »
Savage said the paper’s former supporters include public figures such as former U.S. Rep. Paul Tsongas, former White House spokesman and ABC host George Stephanopoulos and former governor and presidential candidate 1988 presidential election Mike Dukakis.
Individuals wishing to support the fundraising effort can make tax-deductible donations payable to: “The Alpha Omega Council” (with memo line Hellenic Chronicle Digitization Project) and by mail to: Alpha Omega Council, PO Box 752, Foxboro, MA 02035.
For more information, contact Nancy Aris Savage.
Featured Image: Nancy Agris Savage holds the first edition of the Hellenic Chronicle in Natick, Massachusetts. (Photo credit / Nicolaus Czarnecki, MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
See the Boston Herald article
