Oregon Digital Newspaper Program Menu

We are often asked what titles are next in line for digitization, so I’m adding a new category to the ODNP blog to announce them. It can take 6-12 months to complete a newspaper digitization project, and I know it would be helpful for researchers to know what titles they can look forward to accessing.

The following titles and the dates being digitized are currently underway and in the digitization queue for this fiscal year, which runs July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024. Not all of them will be completed in that time–e.g., projects starting in April 2024 will be completed later in 2024 or early 2025–but we will begin work and make progress toward completion during that time period.

• Portland. PORTLAND OBSERVER (1970-2014)
• Florence. THE WEST (1891-1901)
• Florence. SIUSLAW PILOT (1913-1915)
• Vernonia. VERNONIA INDEPENDENT (1986-2006)
• Oregon City. CLACKAMAS PRINT (2011-2023)
• Ashland. ASHLAND DAILY TIDINGS (1921-1929)
• Ashland. SOUTHERN OREGON MINER (1944-1952)
• Hillsboro. HILLSBORO ARGUS (1934-1949)
• Cannon Beach. UPPER LEFT EDGE (1992-1997)
• Springfield. SPRINGFIELD NEWS and LANE COUNTY NEWS (1907-1936)
• Silverton. TORCH OF REASON (1896-1903)
• Redmond. REDMOND SPOKESMAN (1914-1916)
• Portland. STREET ROOTS (2009-2019)
• Cottage Grove. COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL (1930-1957)
• Port Orford. PORT ORFORD TRIBUNE (1920-1925)
• Port Orford. PORT ORFORD POST (1880-1882; 1937-1940)
• Port Orford. PORT ORFORD NEWS (1926-1976)

A few more titles are pending confirmation as we wait for final paperwork and grant funding to come through, so stay tuned!

Thanks to the Rogue Valley Genealogical Society who sponsored this digitization project–and champion of all things related to southern Oregon history, Maureen Battistella–we are continuing to grow our collection of newspapers from that part of the state.

• Ashland Daily Evening Tidings (1890)
• Ashland Tidings (1894-1895; 1911-1912)
• Ashland Daily Tidings (1919-1921)

The Ashland Tidings is also a good example of how often newspaper titles change over time, which can be a challenge for cataloging and researching them. Each new title change requires a new LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number), which is similar to the unique ISBN number for books, which means we have to create separate entries for each title in Historic Oregon Newspapers. So even though Ashland Tidings, Ashland Daily Evening Tidings, and Ashland Daily Tidings are pretty much the same newspaper, the Library of Congress and our own serials catalogers have to treat them as distinct. This can be frustrating for researchers who might wonder which title to search for a given topic.

The most efficient way to search Historic Oregon Newspapers for a topic in a specific city is to search simultaneously across all of the newspapers from that city. To do that, start in Advanced Search, scroll down to the section Limit By, and select a city from the drop-down menu (see below).You can also change the dates to limit the results to a particular date range.

The North Coast Times Eagle is a new addition to the Historic Oregon Newspapers database. Issues from this title cover 1979-2007. It was published in Wheeler, Astoria, and Cannon Beach, and has the spunky, DIY feel of a community newsletter with a global conscience. North Coast Times Eagle has numerous articles about the local fishing industry, the threat of nuclear arms, investigations into violence against women, editorials about racism at home and abroad, as well as poetry, local art, and cartoons.

The Oregon State Library has been a long-standing supporter of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program through its LSTA grant funding to Oregon libraries to fund newspaper digitization. Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding is allocated from the federal government to states to support libraries and other cultural heritage institutions. In 2022-2023, we were glad to partner with seven organizations with LSTA grants to digitize newspapers from around the state:

• Cottage Grove Sentinel (1924-1929), sponsored by the Cottage Grove Museum
• Gresham Outlook (1911-1928), sponsored by the Multnomah County Library
• Hermiston Herald (1915-1945), sponsored by the Hermiston Public Library
• Hood River Glacier (1924-1928), sponsored by the Hood River Public Library
• Illinois Valley News (1937-1952), sponsored by the Josephine Community Library District
• Opportunity News (1965-1968), sponsored by Oregon Historical Society
• Toveri (1916-1921), sponsored by the Astoria Public Library

Issues from 2015-2016 of the Baker County Record-Courier newspapers are now available in Historic Oregon Newspapers. These are relatively recent issues compared to the the myriad historical newspapers we provide in the database, but it’s a great example of how ODNP digitization projects can focus on whatever content someone wants to make available from any time period. In this case, the director of the Baker County Library, Perry Stokes, had 77 print issues of the Record-Courier in his library, and he wanted to make sure they could be accessible and preserved for future research. He sent the issues to us in Eugene, where we digitized and processed them for access in Historic Oregon Newspapers.

Our collection of newspapers from the coastal community of Coquille continues to grow, thanks to the efforts of our stalwart champion, Bert Dunn. The latest additions are issues of the Coquille Valley Herald from 1936-1946. Small-town newspapers are full of interesting regional history, but it’s also fascinating to see local responses to global events, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States entry into World War II in December 1941.

We’re pleased to announce the addition of several new historical titles from Scio:

• Scio News (1870-1871)
• Scio Press (1890)
• Scio Weekly Press (1890-1897)
• The Santiam News (1897-1917)
• Intermountain Tribune and Linn County Agriculturalist
• Scio Tribune (1919-1925)
• The Scio tribune and Santiam news, consolidated (1917-1919)
• The Scio Tribune (1915-1917)

The Scio Public Library sponsored this digitization project, which included microfilm and digital photography of original newsprint.

UO Libraries recently contributed six Oregon prison newspapers to American Prison Newspapers, a new open-access collection available through Reveal Digital, a project of JSTOR.

American Prisons, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside provides free online access to over 450 newspapers published from U.S. prisons.

UO Libraries provided the following titles, which were digitized from the original paper copies held in Special Collections & University Archives:

• Detour (24 issues, 1960-1965); Oregon State Correctional Institution
• Inside-Out (1 issue, 1972); unknown facility
• Lakota Oyate-ki (11 issues, 1973-1988); Lakota Indian Club, Oregon State Penitentiary
• Lend a Hand (52 issues, 1908-1922); Oregon State Penitentiary
• Shadows  (159 issues, 1935-1967); Oregon State Penitentiary
• The Walled-Street Journal (2 issues, 1969-1971); Oregon State Penitentiary

Reveal Digital develops open access primary source collections from underrepresented 20^th century voices of dissent. Reveal Digital partners with libraries, museums, historical societies, and individual collections to curate and source materials, which they digitize and host on the JSTOR website.