In 1952, a University of Oregon librarian set out to accomplish an audacious vision: to collect and preserve all Oregon newspapers on microfilm. To reach her goal she would need more than administrative buy-in, more than state-of-the-art equipment, more than funding: she would need a roadmap of Oregon and plenty of gas.
Reference Librarian Elizabeth Findly created the Oregon Newspaper Microfilming Project in the University of Oregon library over seventy years ago, and researchers from Oregon and beyond continue to benefit from her vision. Her work established the library’s unique collection of over 1,500 Oregon newspaper titles on microfilm, which eventually enabled the library to create the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program to ensure open, online access to these important primary sources.
Part I: Early Newspaper Collecting
Elizabeth Findly came to work in the UO library in 1934. By then the library had started collecting Oregon newspapers in their original newsprint for a while, thanks to a gift from Professor Joseph Schafer of the History department who donated his personal collection to the library (Sheldon, qtd. in McCullough, 102). By 1942 the library’s newspaper collection numbered over 8,000 bound volumes (McCullough, 102). Findly had “a well-known enthusiasm for newspapers as research materials,” and in her role as head of the Reference Division from 1947-1970, she systematically ordered subscriptions to nearly every Oregon newspaper published in the state to grow the library’s collection (Stave, 14). In 1969, the library was subscribing to 123 Oregon newspapers, as well as twenty titles from out of state and thirty foreign newspapers (“Newspapers on Microfilm”).
In 1949 the UO Libraries purchased the first microfilm copies of a newspaper for the library collection. The library acquired microfilm copies of the Portland Oregonian for the years 1851-1910 directly from the Oregonian. Carl W. Hintz, head librarian, “states that microfilm will not only be more durable but will save 95 per cent in storage space” (“Library Buys Old Copies”).
By the late 1940s the “ample facilities for storing newspapers” was running short and the library’s collection of newspapers was fragile and in danger of disintegration (Stave, 14). Elizabeth Findly and the library’s administration were actively planning to establish a newspaper microfilm operation in the library.
Part II: The Oregon Newspaper Microfilming Project Begins
In 1952 the Oregon Newspaper Microfilming Project began in the library’s General Reference department under Elizabeth Findly’s direction. She set out to accomplish what she called “a rather ambitious microfilming project,” nothing less than assembling the most comprehensive collection of Oregon newspapers in order to preserve them on microfilm (qtd. in Stave, 14).
Findly created a cost-recovery model to fund the microfilm service. The library would contract with newspaper publishers such that publishers would give the library current subscriptions to their papers and loans of their back files for microfilming. Once the issues were microfilmed, the publishers would buy copies of the microfilm reels at $18 per 1,200-page reel. “About a dozen newspapers became ‘contract papers’ but Findly affirmed her intention to film all Oregon newspapers with or without the cooperation of their publishers” (Stave, p. 14). Findly had to go out on the road to retrieve the papers herself.
Over the next twenty-five years, Findly, and later Frances Schoen, traveled by car around the state in search of newspaper back files. They visited “every known publisher, including the smallest weeklies, and [brought] back their papers for the [microfilm] camera.” Findly sometimes put thousands of miles on her Oldsmobile in a biennial period. Schoen often traveled with her three children and husband, and the whole family helped load papers into their station wagon. Schoen reported that she went through three station wagons, and that there were ‘no back roads in Oregon that we did not travel’” (Stave, 15).
Oregon libraries and historical societies also contributed back issues of newspapers. For example, the Oregon Historical Society had collections at least as large as those at UO and OHS generously lent papers that had not been part of their own microfilming efforts (Stave, 15).
Part III: Production and Funding Challenges
In 1958 the Oregon Daily Emerald reported that the library had microfilmed more than 200,000 pages of Oregon newspapers since 1956. Nonetheless, in the first decade of the program, the microfilming staff averaged twelve rolls per month, hardly enough to keep up with current subscriptions, much less to address the back issues already in the library. In 1961 Findly took over the microfilming operations and pushed the staff to increase their output. Frances Schoen, along with five to fifteen student employees, pushed the project’s output up to forty reels per month in 1963, and up to sixty-eight per month by 1967 (Stave, 15)
The newspaper microfilming project relied on sales of positive reels to newspaper publishers, as well as libraries, historical societies, and museums to help fund the program. However, the most profitable newspapers—the Portland Oregonian, the Salem Statesman-Journal, and the Eugene Register-Guard, were sold exclusively by a commercial microfilm publisher, so the library program had “to rely for most of its income upon single subscriptions to the smaller, less frequently filmed papers” (Stave, 15). This cost model also didn’t account for microfilming newspapers that had ceased publication, and which no longer had publishers or successors to purchase the backfiles. The UO Library eventually became the microfilm service’s best customer when it decided to purchase one positive copy of every roll produced. In 1997, the UO library and one other subscriber accounted for 60 percent of the of the newspaper microfilm project’s revenue (Stave, 15).
Part IV: Stability and Growth
According to Stave, the program enjoyed a long period of stability and efficiency from 1977 into the late 1990s thanks to full-time expert staff, well-designed workflows, standards-based filming, quality control checks, good equipment, and an accurate database of holdings (Stave, 20).
This positioned the program to receive a $52,220 planning grant in 1994 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to participate in the U.S. Newspaper Program, a national project started in 1982 to “preserve, catalog and microfilm newspapers from the 1800s to the present.” The library’s grant award funded a survey of newspaper holdings at libraries and historical societies across Oregon, ultimately contributing to a union catalog of all U.S. newspapers (Klopfenstein). Another larger grant of $258,220 came in 1998 to continue the cataloging and microfilming project (Meeuwsen).”
Part V: The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program Begins
The UO Libraries continued to subscribe to Oregon newspapers and to preserve them on microfilm through the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2008, Karen Estlund, the head of Digital Scholarship Services, seized the opportunity to make the newspaper collection more accessible by partnering with the National Digital Newspaper Program to begin digitizing titles in the Libraries’ newspaper collection. Below is a timeline of the next phase of the newspaper program, the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program.
- 2009 – UO Libraries awarded a $363,042 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project. The grant award funded digitization of 100,000 pages of Oregon newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program.
- 2010 – Historic Oregon Newspapers website goes live.
- 2011 – Over 100,000 pages of digitized newspapers added to Historic Oregon Newspapers website. UO Libraries awarded additional funding to continue newspaper digitization.
- 2012 – More than 200,000 pages of digitized newspapers available on the Historic Oregon Newspapers website.
- 2013 – UO Libraries awarded additional funding to continue newspaper digitization. Over 300,000 pages of digitized newspapers available in Historic Oregon Newspapers.
- 2014 – Historic Oregon Newspapers website reaches over 500,000 pages. The last year of newspaper microfilming in UO Libraries.
- 2015 – Final year of National Digital Newspaper Program funding. Over 700,000 pages available online. The UO Libraries’ newspaper microfilm service ends. Born-digital newspaper preservation program begins.
- 2016 – A selection of current, born-digital Oregon newspapers available in Historic Oregon Newspapers. The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program begins to operate on a cost-recovery model by partnering with organizations to fund digitization.
- 2025 – Over 2.5 million pages of digitized and current newspapers—380 titles—available in Historic Oregon Newspapers
The story of Elizabeth Findly’s work to assemble the tens of thousands of newspaper issues that became the University of Oregon Libraries’ comprehensive collection illustrates both the precarity of the historical record and the impact that one person and one institution can have to preserve that record. It’s amazing that we now have such complete runs of so many newspaper titles, with so few gaps in coverage. Her work demonstrates that library collections and archives don’t simply happen; they are the result of advocacy, planning, fundraising, lifting, sorting, describing, and documenting. Elizabeth Findly died ten years before the first digital Oregon newspaper appeared online in Historic Oregon Newspapers, but it couldn’t have happened without her foresight and drive, literally.
–written by Elizabeth Peterson
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References
“Baker Gives Old Files To Library Collection,” Oregon Daily Emerald, March 19, 1943, p. 11.
Klopfenstein, Ed, “University librarians to help in preserving state’s old newsprint,” Oregon Daily Emerald, July 7, 1994, p. 1, 4
“Library Buys Old Copies,” Oregon Daily Emerald, Nov. 1, 1949, p. 6.
McCollough, Robert. “The Development of the Collections of the University of Oregon Library: Policies and Practices, 1875-198_. University of Oregon Library, 1988. https://hdl.handle.net/1794/903
Meeuwsen, Teri. “National project archives Oregon’s newspapers.” Oregon Daily Emerald, Feb. 19, 1998, p. 9.
“Newspapers Microfilmed,” Oregon Daily Emerald, May 5, 1958, p. 7.
“Newspapers on Microfilm Ready at UO.” Eugene Register-Guard, May 5, 1969, p. 12A
Sheldon, Henry Davidson, and University of Oregon. Library. The University of Oregon Library, 1882-1942. Eugene, Or: [University of Oregon Library], 1942.
Stave, Tom. “Newspaper microfilming at the University of Oregon.” OLA Quarterly (1997), 3(2), 14-15+. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1448
