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The archives of the Harpswell Anchor, from its first edition in July 1998 through June 2026, are now available in a searchable database at harpswell.historyarchives.online.
The website is the culmination of an effort to digitize and preserve years of Anchor archives previously unavailable to the public. It also allows readers to search the archives of the “old Anchor,” for the years 1998-2020, for the first time since the newspaper’s sale in 2021.
The Anchor’s main website — harpswellanchor.org — contained PDFs of print editions from 2012 to the present, but those files were not searchable and pre-2012 editions were not available at all. The archives page on harpswellanchor.org now includes a link to the new site.
The late Robert “Bob” Anderson established the Harpswell Anchor in 1998 and served as editor and publisher until 2020, when the newspaper shut down during the pandemic. In 2021, a group of Harpswell residents established a nonprofit called Harpswell News to acquire the newspaper and resume publication.
With the purchase of the newspaper, the Anchor received many back editions — a haphazard collection of print newspapers and digital files on CDs and hard drives.
In 2024, Anchor staff and volunteers retrieved the collection from storage and set out to organize and inventory it. The Anchor then contracted the Iowa-based firm Advantage Archives to digitize the archives and create the website. The Anchor’s editor, J.W. Oliver, previously worked with Advantage to preserve an archive of Maine newspapers dating to the 1870s.
In addition to staff and volunteers, the Anchor received help from the Harpswell Historical Society and the Orr’s Island Library. Both institutions provided access to their collections of Anchor back editions.
“There’s a saying that newspapers write the first draft of history,” Oliver said. “This project returns that first draft to the people of Harpswell and ensures permanent, free access to more than a quarter-century of the community’s history.”
The new archive is missing a single edition: June 2004. The print edition is missing from local collections and a digital file could not be recovered. Anyone who has a June 2004 edition is asked to email Oliver at joliver@harpswellanchor.org so the Anchor can complete the archive.
The Anchor is also collecting copies of an earlier Harpswell newspaper, Fishy Business, and may add them to the archive. A single edition of Fishy Business is available on the new archives website.
