Category: Announcements

Chronicling America Posts 5 Millionth Page

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

As part of the Library of Congress’ and National Endowment for the Humanities’ National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), the ODNP is pleased to announce that Chronicling America, the NDNP’s online collection of searchable, historic newspapers from across the United States, has reached a total of 5 million newspaper pages! Chronicling America currently hosts content from 16 of Oregon’s historic newspaper titles, which can also be found on our Historic Oregon Newspapers website.

The following announcement from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities was released yesterday:

October 22, 2012

Chronicling America Posts 5 Millionth Page

Popular Online Resource Provides Access to Nation’s Historic Newspapers

The Chronicling America website, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, a free, searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers, has posted its 5 millionth page.

Launched by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2007, Chronicling America provides enhanced and permanent access to historically significant newspapers published in the United States between 1836 and 1922. It is a part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a joint effort between the two agencies and 32 state partners.

“This magnificent resource captures the warp and weft of life as it was lived in grassroots America,” said NEH Chairman Jim Leach. “Metropolitan newspapers were early targets for digitization, but Chronicling America allows the journalism of the smaller cities and the rural countryside to become accessible in all its variety—and sometimes, quirkiness.”

“Chronicling America is one of the great historical reference services on the web,” said Roberta Shaffer, associate librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress. “It is a treasure trove of information about communities, personalities, key events and culture in the United States, and it is all free and available to the public.”

The site now features 5 million pages from more than 800 newspapers from 25 states. The site averaged more than 2.5 million page views per month last year and is being used by students, researchers, congressional staff, journalists and others for all kinds of projects, from daily podcasts to history contests. The news, narratives and entertainment encapsulated in the papers transport readers in time.

Newspaper clipping features four illustrations of THeadore Roosevelt, each portraying a different facial expression. Text reads: "Characteristic Poses of the President. The Roosevelt Laugh - When the president is out in the woods he enjoys a good story, and his laugh is hearty and care free. President Roosevelts Latest Picture - In repose the president's face is very solumn and dignified; in action it is one of the most expressive countenances in America. The President's Smile for the Children - President Roosevelt loves the children, and one of his most kindly smiles is reserved for them. When the President is Strenuous - When President Roosevelt clinches a point in the midst of his oratory, his set expression is proof in itself of his earnestness."
Daily capital journal. (Salem, Or.) April 20, 1907, Page 3, Image 3. Chronicling America: http://tinyurl.com/9oko58r
Historic Oregon Newspapers: http://tinyurl.com/8dtr3s9

For instance, on this day, Oct. 22, 100 years ago, there was a lot of news about Theodore Roosevelt recovering from an assassination attempt several days earlier. A Washington Times headline said “Roosevelt Home Swinging His Hat with Happiness, Finishes Tedious Trip to Oyster Bay in Good Shape.” A crime story in the New York Tribune read, “Girl Runs Down Thief, Pajama-Clad Coed Races over Campus to Save Violin.” International news focused on the First Balkan War. “20,000 Turks Reported Taken by Bulgarians,” according to a story in The Washington Herald.

In 2003, the Library and NEH established a formal agreement that identified goals for the program, institutional responsibilities and overall support. In 2004, the NEH announced guidelines for grants, funded by NEH, awarded to cultural-heritage institutions wishing to join the program and select, digitize and deliver to the Library approximately 100,000 newspaper pages per award. Since 2005, the NEH has awarded more than $22 million to 32 state libraries, historical societies and universities representing states in the national program.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about NEH and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, is the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled collections and integrated resources to Congress and the American people. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may also be accessed through the Library’s website, www.loc.gov.

Recognition and Prizes to be Awarded for Student Use of Chronicling America in National History Day Competition

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) and provider of historic Oregon newspaper content for the Chronicling America historic American newspapers website (hosted by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities), the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP) is pleased to spread the word about a new opportunity for recognition of middle and high school students with a passion for history.

Text reads: Get in the contest now.
St. Johns review. (Saint Johns, Or.) January 01, 1915, Image 3. http://tinyurl.com/7znnqyc

The following press release was published today on the National Endowment for the Humanities website at http://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2012-06-14:

WASHINGTON (June 14, 2012) —  The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced a new contest to encourage middle and high school students to use Chronicling America, the NEH and Library of Congress-supported digital archive of historic newspapers, in their projects for National History Day.

At the closing ceremonies of National History Day, held on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Maryland, NEH Chairman Jim Leach announced that NEH would begin offering recognition and prizes to students who make effective use of the Chronicling America database in 2013 National History Day submissions. This would include cash prizes for exceptional use of the newspaper archives for junior and senior students in all submission categories. All National History Day participants who incorporate Chronicling America in their project research will receive certificates of recognition.

Chronicling America offers students free access to nearly five million pages of hyper-local stories, advertisements, and opinions published between 1836 and 1922 in 28 states (and growing) across the country. In addition, EDSITEment, NEH’s educational website for teachers, students, and parents, will develop new educator and student resources to facilitate and encourage use of the newspaper material.

Created through a 7-year-old partnership between the NEH and the Library of Congress, Chronicling America allows visitors access to newspaper pages from Arizona, 1836-1922; California, 1860-1922; District of Columbia, 1836-1922; Florida, 1900-1910; Hawaii, 1836-1922; Illinois, 1860-1922; Kansas, 1860-1922; Kentucky, 1860-1922; Louisiana, 1860-1922; Minnesota, 1860-1922; Missouri, 1836-1922; Montana, 1860-1922; Nebraska, 1880-1922; New Mexico, 1836-1922; New York, 1880-1922; Ohio, 1836-1922; Oklahoma, 1860-1922; Oregon, 1860-1922; Pennsylvania, 1836-1922; South Carolina, 1860-1922; Tennessee, 1836-1922; Texas, 1860-1922; Utah, 1860-1922; Vermont, 1836-1922; Virginia, 1860-1922; and Washington, 1836-1922. The project is conducted in phases, with new states being added to the list each year.

National History Day is a national year-long academic program focused on historical research for 6th to 12th grade students.  Each year, more than half a million students chose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research to prepare original papers, websites, exhibits, performances, and documentaries for entry into local, state, and national History Day competitions.  The program culminates in the national contest, held each June at the University of Maryland.

Watch a live webcast of the 2012 National History Day awards ceremony online, starting at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 14:  http://www.nhd.org/

About the National Endowment for the Humanities

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

~~~

Text reads: Daily Capital Journal. Makers of Oregon History
Daily capital journal. (Salem, Or.) June 11, 1907, Image 1. http://tinyurl.com/6lgqd5n

Oregon students can get a head start on ideas for National History Day contest entries that include Chronicling America resources by learning about the many historic Oregon newspapers that are currently available through the Chronicling America website:

Astoria, OR:

The Daily Astorian

The Daily Morning Astorian

The Tri-weekly Astorian

Burns, OR:

The Times-Herald

Klamath Falls, OR:

The Evening Herald

Medford, OR:

The Medford Mail Tribune

Ontario, OR:

The Ontario Argus

Portland, OR:

The New Northwest

Saint Johns, OR:

The St. Johns Review

Salem, OR:

The Evening Capital Journal

The Daily Capital Journal 1896-1899

The Daily Capital Journal 1903-1919

The Daily Journal

The Capital Journal

Sumpter, OR:

The Sumpter Miner

 ~ Good luck and happy searching! ~

Historic Oregon Newspapers Offically Launched!

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We are proud to announce that our Historic Oregon Newspapers website has been moved out of Beta and officially launched.

During the months when it was in Beta, the site received over 70,000 views. Many followers of this Blog were doubtlessly numbered among those visitors. While we will still be making additions and alterations to the site in the months ahead, you now may be assured that basic functionality has been thoroughly tested and debugged… in other words, the thing is working dependably! You can now expect a site viewing and searching experience free of drops, stops and hiccups. (Well, mostly… it is the Internet, after all!)

For those who are already regular visitors of the site: thanks for bearing with us throughout the development phase.

For those who are just discovering it for the first time: more than 180,000 pages of Oregon’s  newspaper heritage are at your fingertips!

Visit us soon at http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ !

Latest Project Updates

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu
  • We are pleased to announce that we have now filled the vacancies on our Advisory Board! Welcome to new members Martha Wells and William Lang. Martha is the former publisher (recently retired) of the Albany Democrat Herald in Albany, Oregon. Bill is Professor of History at Portland State University and Executive Editor of the Oregon Encyclopedia. We are thrilled to have recruited such well-qualified Advisers, and confident that they will provide well-informed perspectives and much valuable input as we continue to move forward with our project.
  • In other good news, last week ODNP was gifted with $250 from a private donor who wishes to remain anonymous. This is sufficient to fund the digitization of about 250 pages of historic newspaper content (i.e. $1 = 1 page; the math is pretty simple!) In order for ODNP to continue adding historic content to the web resource, we will need to rely on a number of funding resources. The contributions of individual donors will be a vital part of the puzzle as we cope with the current budgetary challenges in Salem and Washington, DC. Thank you, private donor!

April Conferences

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

ODNP had an eventful week to kick off the month of April! Both the Oregon Heritage Conference and the Oregon Library Association’s annual conference were scheduled at this time, and (with a little creative itinerary-juggling) ODNP staff were in attendance at both events.

Our Quality Control Specialist, John Taylor, started things off on Thursday morning, April 7th, with a ‘Showcase’ table session at OLA in Salem. The next day, John returned to Salem with Karen Estlund, ODNP Project Coordinator, and the two collaborated to present a talk and slide show. Geared to a specialist audience of librarians from throughout the state, Karen and John’s presentation concentrated on process and technical matters–METS, ALTO, OCR–the “nuts and bolts” of running a major digitization project in an academic library.

While they were busy in Salem, Project Manager Jason Stone was in attendance April 7-9 at the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department’s annual Heritage Conference. The conference was held this year in Astoria, as that historic Oregon community is celebrating its bicentennial in 2011. Jason represented ODNP in the Premier Plenary Session of “leading players on the Oregon heritage stage,” and he was also a panelist for a featured discussion, ‘Heritage Collaborations the Statewide Way.’ Even more than talking about ODNP, Jason enjoyed attending various conference sessions and listening to heritage stars from throughout the State of Oregon and beyond.

Facade of Liberty Theater in Astoria, OR
Historic Liberty Theater in downtown Astoria: the site of many OHC 2011 events. (Photo courtesy of Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce)

Karen, John and Jason came away with some new insights and fresh ideas for moving ODNP forward. Best of all, it was another great opportunity to share the news about Historic Oregon Newspapers with the professional communities of librarians and historical preservationists. We found that many were already regular visitors of our Beta site. Word is definitely getting out!

Thanks to the Oregon Library Association and Oregon Heritage Commission for inviting us to participate in these events.

Advisory Board News

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

Our Advisory Board convened on January 21st in order to review our progress over the past 6+ months and to plot strategy for the next phase of the project. We explored ongoing funding options, brainstormed methods of promoting the digital newspaper resource to the public, and began the process of selecting the next group of titles that will be queued for future digitization.

We are also saying “goodbye” to a couple of Board members who were instrumental in helping us to get this project off the ground in the early stages: George Vogt is retiring from his position as Director of the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, and historian William Robbins is withdrawing from outside obligations in order to devote his full attention to finishing an important book project. Thank you George and Bill, for all you’ve done, from all of us!

We are happy to report that we Geoff Wexler of OHS has agreed to fill one of the open seats on our Board. Geoff brought us a gift: original issues of Abigail Scott Duniway’s New Northwest. We are planning to re-film this title for digitization, and OHS should be commended for loaning us their set of originals.

ODNP management will be seeking candidates to fill the other open seat on the Board; expect an announcement here in the upcoming months.

ODNP Featured in the Herald and News of Klamath Falls

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

ODNP was recently the subject of a feature story in the Klamath Falls Herald and News. Published in the Sunday, August 1st ‘Living Well’ section of the paper, Ryan Pfeil’s article includes lots of information on our projects, some amusing anecdotes from the digitized issues, and a timeline of journalism in Klamath Falls. Publication of this piece coincides with the ‘go live’ on Chronicling America of approximately 11,ooo pages of historic content from the Klamath Falls Evening Herald; an important predecessor of the current Klamath Falls newspaper.

'Chronicling America' by Ryan Pfeil, from Page C1, Klamath Falls Herald and News, 08-01-2010

Thanks to Ryan for taking the time to speak with us, and for producing a fine article on our project.

Portland Oregonian at Multnomah County Library

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We have recently announced that we will be digitizing select dates of the Portland Oregonian as part of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project. These issues, mostly from 1900 and 1901, should be available online at some point later this year.

For those who are interested in accessing a more complete archive of past Oregonian issues, we are happy to note that there is now another resource available. The Multnomah County Library has recently announced that the paper will be available as a free, digital resource for library patrons:

“Multnomah County Library now features the only publicly available, complete full-text digitized archive of The Oregonian newspaper. Multnomah County Library cardholders can now access every article, editorial, illustration, photograph and advertisement published in The Oregonian between 1861 and 1972. By the end of this year, the archive will include all editions up to 1987.”

This is great news, as digitized content from The Oregonian had previously been accessible only on a for-pay basis. For more information, you can read the full article on the Multnomah County Library website.

Learning From Old Media

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

This week I am choosing to highlight and article by Brian Veseling originally published on the IFRA website.

“Learning from old media” explores news website design strategies that have been drawn from the page layout techniques of newspapers of yesteryear. The author discusses creating dramatic headlines, highlighting the best elements of each article, organizing information around hierarchies of value, and bundling ‘packages’ of related content. There are many scans and screen shots illustrating both the contempoarary and historic application of these techniques.

This is interesting stuff for those of us who are frequent users of online news sources. It also offers something of a “mirror image” on our project to convert historic papers to new media digital formats. I was fascinated to learn how old tricks of the typesetters’ trade continue to have relevance in how news gets disseminated via cutting-edge technology, as well as an ongoing impact upon our perceptions of the information that is presented to us.

Thanks Are In Order

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

Just wanted to use this week’s post to offer an official and well-deserved “Thank You” to some people who’ve made valuable contributions to our project over the past several weeks:

THANKS FOR THE HELPING HANDS!

Thanks to Lisa Berenschot and Sommer Fain, our student assistants who performed much of the page collation work during the academic year that was just completed. Now that summer is here, Lisa and Sommer have both accepted out-of-state internships in their fields of study. Congratulations and good luck!

Thanks to Isolde Raftery, our historic newspaper essayist. Isolde has recently completed researching and writing the essays for all NDNP titles included phase one of our project. A graduate student of Journalism, Isolde is spending the summer living and working in New York City.

Thanks to Karen Nitz, librarian in the Western History Room in the Public Library in Burns, Oregon. Karen provided invaluable assistance to Isolde when she was researching the history of the Burns Times-Herald — in particular, she helped us find the public records that cleared up the mystery of C.A. Byrd’s first name (see earlier blog post dated April 16th for more details.)

Finally, thanks to Gary Dielman, President of the Baker County Library Board and member of our ODNP Advisory Board. Gary helped us by researching Baker County records for information on J.W. Connella, another nineteenth-century Oregon newspaperman we knew only by his initials. Gary’s work provided the vital clues that helped us solve this one.

(The subject’s full name turned out to be James Wright Connella. Here’s a link to Connella’s genealogy page at RootsWeb. Key for our purposes was the following passage: “1900 Federal Census in North Sumpter Precinct, Baker County, Oregon, lists James W Connella, age 40, born January 1860 in Alabama, father born Virginia, mother born Alabama, occupation Editorial [illegible word] Paper, residing as a lodger in the home of Charles Marsh and his wife Eva — Marsh’s occupation is Editor [illegible word] Paper”)