Compass Media has launched digital archives of the national newspaper.
The free-to-access archives feature issues of the Cayman Compass and its predecessors, dating back to the first issue in 1965.
After more than two years of carefully cutting, binding and scanning pre-digital newspapers, around 10,000 editions – 416,000 – are now available on the website archives.caymancompass.com.
“This is a hugely exciting development, not just for the Cayman Compass but for the whole of our community and beyond,” said publisher Tripp Donnelly.
“The digital archives provide the first historic records of their kind, with the most comprehensive documentation of our islands since the 1960s. This is of enormous significance and importance to safeguard our collective cultural memory and understanding of our way of life.”
Modelled on the system used by the “New York Times”, the Compass archives are now the largest and most advanced in the Caribbean, with online articles and new issues of the weekly newspaper added in real time.
Preserving history
Until now, the Cayman Compass newspapers were preserved in bound copies, which become fragile and damaged over time.
For more than two decades, the late Compass journalist Carol Winker painstakingly preserved copies of each published newspaper and arranged for their binding. More recently, maintaining digital copies of the newspapers has been under the care of Compass archivist Ivan Burges, who spent several years meticulously scanning pages by hand.
“I have always been a collector, and I have always valued the newspaper as a source of information,” he said. “I was the initial ‘scanner’ but that was taking too long.”
When Dart Media and Entertainment bought the Compass in 2023, the future of the archives was secured. During an initial tour of the Compass building, Dart executives were shown the archives room, saw the bound volumes of newspapers and had the idea to digitise them.
Saving newspapers and articles online also ensures that this historic material is protected from natural disasters such as hurricanes.
During Hurricane Ivan in 2004, many people lost precious cuttings of Compass stories and photos. More than 20 years later, the threat of storms is still a constant concern that paper archives may be damaged or destroyed.
How it was done
The digital archives were created using a combination of artificial intelligence and old-fashioned manual labour.
Burges and his colleague Sheree Rankin spent countless hours scanning pages from the original bound copies before saving the files to cloud storage.
Compass Media then partnered with Cayman Islands digital agency Collective to extract article content using AI to create a user-friendly search tool.
Many of the pages scanned from the original newspapers were slightly damaged when extracted from the binding, or where glue had seeped into the words, as well as general wear-and-tear. AI was therefore utilised to recognise and fill in any missing characters.
Along with the ability to view entire issues of a newspaper in the archives, individual articles can also be retrieved through a keyword search. To enable this function, AI technology was trained to recognise and recall stories, even learning to overcome hurdles when an article ‘jumps’ from one page to another.
“It is important to understand the Herculean effort that went into bringing this to life,” said Donnelly. “This was an extraordinary achievement by the team here.
“We wanted to make sure that everything we did with the archives honoured all those who came before us at the Compass. They came from a small organisation, not knowing what the Compass could mean in the decades ahead, so we try and honour their past every day, as stewards of that history.”
Rich resource
The newspaper has reported on nearly every occurrence in the Cayman Islands during the past six decades, meaning the archives are a rich resource for information about that period in Cayman’s history. They show how life has evolved from the ‘islands that time forgot’ to the modern financial powerhouse that they are today.
Everything is documented from national events to people, places, political news, crime, traditions and celebrations, along with births, deaths and marriages – all recorded for posterity.
Other features include the ability to check what was happening on the day of a person’s birth, and to look at previous front pages in years gone by to see how times have changed.
People using the archives website can also enter their name to search for articles about themselves or their business.
The search system is easy to use, so ideal for people of all ages, including the general public, researchers, historians and school students.
Cultural importance
The digital newspaper archives, which were made possible through the support of Dart and the Kenneth B. Dart Foundation, follow on the success of TimeBack.
With a similar objective as the newspaper archives, TimeBack aims to help preserve Cayman’s history through the digitisation of approximately 347,000 images from the Compass photo archives.
Twelve curated collections, each of around 100 photos, have been uploaded to the website timeback.ky, and have proved popular both online and at exhibitions and community screenings held to showcase the images.
“Dart’s investments in Compass Media are a reflection of belief in the value Cayman’s past and the importance of quality journalism to its future,” said Jackie Doak, director of Dart Media & Entertainment. “Building on the creation of Compass TV and the TimeBack photo collection, the archive is the latest demonstration of Dart’s commitment to the people, technology and values that are essential to a world class media company and the community it serves.”
As the newspaper digital archives go live this week, it also coincides with the one-year anniversary of the launch of Compass TV, another important cultural platform for Cayman’s community.
“We are grateful to Dart for their continued investment in Compass Media,” said Richy O’Carroll, member of the Compass leadership team. “Just a year after bringing local television back to the Cayman Islands, we are now proud to launch the digital newspaper archives. And, unlike newspapers in other places, the Compass archive is free for everyone here in Cayman and around the world.”
The Compass Archives can be accessed at archives.caymancompass.com.
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Fabulous job, Compass Team! What a treasure this is! Not only has it been fun looking for family, friends and events but also seeing what was going on during those events. All of the sweet family announcements and more!
Amazing job! Thank you for giving us an important piece of history back.