Yesterday I was involved in one of the less exciting tasks that archive work offers: noting down the dates of all of the editions of one of the newspaper collections that is held in Deseronto Archives. The newspaper in question was the last one to be regularly published in the town. It started life in 1968 as The Deseronto and Skyway Scanner (named after the newly-opened Skyway Bridge), but became The Quinte Scanner under new ownership in 1971.

Even the mundane job of noting down which issues the archives holds had occasional moments of interest.

Here is the nameplate of the Volume 1, No. 34 edition:

The Quinte Scanner, Volume 1, No. 34

Note the date.

Here is the following week’s paper:

The Quinte Scanner, Volume 1, Number 35

In all, there were three of these newspapers which carried the wrong date. This is probably something that is unlikely to happen in a well-staffed national or regional newspaper, but it is something that is worth bearing in mind if you are doing research with smaller local papers like this one: the date on the front cover might not be authoritative!