The Park City Library is now the physical home of the last 40 years of The Park Record.

The newspaper’s staff on Wednesday moved nearly 80 bound volumes containing original print copies from 1977 to 2017 out of its offices at 1670 Bonanza Drive to the library, 1255 Park Ave.

Library Director Adriane Juarez is more than honored.

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“It’s been a fairly recent occurrence that Publisher Andy Bernhard approached the Park City Library about having the bound print copies of The Park Record housed here,” she said. “We are absolutely thrilled to be discussing this option to have these available here at the library. We were able to create some storage space where those will be kept safely.”

We are absolutely thrilled to be discussing this option to have these available here at the library…” Adriane Juarez, Park City Library director

The public will be able to access the pages once the volumes are put in order and recorded in the library’s inventory, Juarez said.

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“The Park City Library has a Park City History room where we house a lot of materials that reflect on the past of our community — mining, skiing and Olympic history — and The Park Record has covered all of those things,” she said. “We are having a contractor create a special wooden stand where these volumes can rest and be looked at. The public will be able to ask to see any edition of the bound print copy. We do need to remember that these are historic items, so we will have them accessed as gently as possible.”

In addition, the library plans to display the volumes on a rotating basis to show the public that the pages are accessible upon request.

“We hope people will feel free to ask to see the papers,” Juarez said. “There is nothing like paging through the physical copy of the paper to get a sense of what happened in Park City over the years.” 

Housing The Park Record copies fits with the Park City Library’s mission to promote literacy, and preserve and document history, according to Juarez.

“It means so much to us to have this collection,” she said. 

The bound copies complement The Park Record’s digital archives that reach back to 1880, the year the newspaper first rolled off the presses, Juarez said.

Digitizing the microfilm of The Park Record was made possible through an ad-hoc committee of the Park City Historical Society called the Newspaper Preservation Committee, which was formed in 2014 by historian Sally Elliott.

The committee, whose goal was converting the entirety of The Park Record archive into a digital format, recruited numerous partners in the effort, including the Park City Library, the Summit County Library, the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, which hosts the digital archive through the Utah Digital Newspapers organization, and The Park Record. 

Andy Bernhard, The Park Record’s publisher, is grateful to the Park City Library for housing the newspaper’s bound volumes.

“What a fabulous resource,” he said. “These books, coupled with the digitized editions found at Utah Digital Newspapers — dating back to our first edition in 1880 — gives a truly exceptional perspective of our history. Many thanks to Adriane and the staff at the library for embracing this project. ”

Although the library will be considered the owners of the bound volumes, the copyright will remain with The Park Record, according to Bernhard.