‘Scranton Times’ archives find a new home

Julie Dunphy
·2 min read

SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — An expansive project is in the works to preserve more than 150 years of history in Lackawanna County.

There is so much history being stored at the Penn Paper Building. Thousand upon thousands of people’s stories and pictures in nearly 2,000 boxes of local newspaper archives.

“This is a big collection”, said Mary Ann Moran-Savakinus, executive director at Lackawanna Historical Society.

Pallets of boxes filled with the stories and pictures of Lackawanna County’s past.

“It ended up being about 1900 boxes in total that we ended up packing and moving,” says Sarach Piccini the assistant director at Lackawanna Historical Society.

Organized and marked.

“Like the 1960s and 50s photos from downtown that everybody seems to remember,” added Piccini.

This preservation project is all happening thanks to the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper which gifted the newspaper’s archives to the Lackawanna Historical Society.

This decision was made after the newspaper was sold to a “Media News Group” in September 2023. Moving the archives is just phase one of the project. The photos and clippings will one day be digitized.

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“In the next few years, we’ll have to determine how to make this collection accessible, how we’re going to organize it what we are going to digitize, and where we’re going to put it,” explained Moran-Savakinus.

The Historical Society has a friend in Doug Fink who donated the temporary storage space at the Penn Paper Building.

“We’ve been in business for 102 years in the community it’s just a way of giving back, and very important, I think it’s a great use of this building as well,” says Fink.

When it comes to diving into history and uncovering forgotten stories exciting finds await.

“Scranton used to have almost 20 different newspapers. in a basement on a shelf in the back, we found copies, bound volumes of the Scranton sun from the 1920s as far as we know the sun doesn’t exist anywhere else, except in one of these boxes somewhere now,” stated Piccini.

Until the historical society finds its new home history will be kept at this iconic Scranton building.

The historical society is made up of more than 800 members, but they are looking to county residents to join or donate.

For more information visit the Lackawanna Historical Society website.

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