Category: Announcements

First Content Goes Live!

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We got some great news earlier this week from Deborah Thomas, National Digital Newspaper Program Coordinator with the Library of Congress:

“Today, we added 275,824 newspaper pages to Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ ) received since our last site update in April. We now have more than 2.3 million pages of newspapers from 295 titles published in 19 states and the District of Columbia available.”

Included among those 275,824 new pages is our very first Oregon content. You can now search and view issues of the Klamath Falls Evening Herald published between 1908 and 1922. Our essay detailing the history of the Evening Herald is also included for those who would like to learn more about this interesting paper.

The next site update at Chronicling America is scheduled for September. At that time, even more Oregon newspapers should be made available. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to have the Evening Herald online. It really feels like our project is coming together now!

A Visit From Mary Solari

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We hosted an important visitor today! Mary Solari and her late husband, Richard, are major benefactors of our Library and the University of Oregon as a whole. They have lent financial support to no less than five library endowments, including the Corrigan-Solari Endowment for Collections, which supports our efforts to build the Digital Collections. Knight Library’s beautiful spiral staircase is also named in honor of the Solaris.

Mary Solari (left) discusses historic newspaper digitization with UO Libraries' Image Services Coordinator, Lesli Larson and NDNP Project Manager, Jason Stone. (Photo by Mandy Garcia)

Mary and her daughter, Ann Ferrante, are currently spending a few days touring the campus here in Eugene. Given all the stops they will be making, we at the Digital Newspaper Program were pleased to get a few minutes with them! We explained the overall goals and processes of our project, displayed a few finished page scans,  and demonstrated the keyword-searching feature on the Chronicling America Website. Mary informed us of their family’s connection to James Piratsky, a newspaper publisher in turn-of-the-(20th) Century California. Searching for ‘Piratsky’ on Chronicling America brought up no less than 17 hits, all published in the San Fransisco Call between 1892 and 1907. Here is the reference from June 24, 1895:

Looks like we found our man! This was an excellent demonstration of the speed, convenience and utility offered by this digital resource.

First ODNP Content Accepted at Library of Congress

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

Big announcement this week! We’ve received word from the Library of Congress in Washington, DC that our first batch of page scans, OCR and associated metadata has met all requirements and been approved for inclusion on the Chronicling America website.  Eureka! The title covered in this batch is the Klamath Falls Evening Herald.

Soon, the public will be able to enjoy online access to a wealth of historic information from this and many other Oregon newspapers.

First Look At Digitized Pages

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

I’ve been busy performing quality control on the first batch of page scans and OCR files I’ve received from our vendor. So far, I’d have to say that they really do impressive work!  Here’s an example to illustrate the digital image quality.  We’ll start by looking at the front page of a Portland New Age (vol. 9 no. 35, issued December 22, 1906)–pictured here at about 30% of original document size:

Here is a screen shot of a word from the main body text of the page shown above (small point size!) It has been enlarged to about 2x its actual size on the page:

Here is an illustration from the same issue–again, enlarged to about twice the size at which it was originally printed:

The resolution, sharpness and contrast of the digitized pages are very good. Our vendor can de-skew, contrast-correct and otherwise “clean” the images for maximum legibility, while still maintaining the “newsprint” look of the originals. With scans of this quality, we are confident of our ability to provide Web service of the newspaper content that is both highly useful and user-friendly.

What will become of the Springfield News?

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

Anyone interested in historic newspaper preservation should take a look at this recent article from the Eugene Register-Guard: ‘Springfield history in limbo.’ (Appeared in print Sunday, March 14, 2010.)

The story concerns the fate of the Springfield News, a city paper that ran from 1903 to 2006.  While a microfilm record of the title run is kept at the University of Oregon’s Knight Library, bound volumes of the original papers have resided for the past four years in a storage locker, cut off from public access.  The article recounts the obstacles to procuring the funds that would be necessary in order to preserve the papers in a permanent, accessible home.

Yes, the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program also receives a mention!  Unfortunately, as our Director, Karen Estlund notes in the article, the Springfield News was not among the titles selected by our advisory board for inclusion in the first phase of our project.  Sadly, it is beyond our present means to digitize every deserving paper.  Even with two years of federal and state funding, we estimate that we will be able to cover the cost of digitizing perhaps 5% of the total historic newspaper content for the years 1860-1922 currently held on microfilm in the UO Library.  So the lamentable situation of the Springfield News is by no means unique; there are many papers stuck in the same ‘limbo’ of uncertain preservation and questionable long-term public accessibility.

If you are an organization or individual who might be interested and able to donate funds that would allow us to digitize the Springfield News–or any other historic local newspaper from the state of Oregon–please visit the Become a Partner/Contribute page at our ODNP Website.

Good News from Washington, D.C.

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

In the past week, we have received a couple of progress updates from Washington:

1. Our sample microfilm batch, which shipped out on the 18th of February, survived the rash of inclement weather on the east coast… successfully passed through all the mandated security measures… and has now been received at the Library of Congress!  Their review of our materials will begin shortly.

2. Our first historic newspaper essay, written and researched by Isolde Raftery, has been approved by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The title covered was the Klamath Falls Evening Herald.  Isolde reports that she found this to be a fascinating, high-quality paper.  In the not-too-distant future, you will be able to read her essay on the Evening Herald (as well as all the other NDNP titles from Oregon) on the Chronicling America website.

The ball is definitely rolling now, and we’re excited to have the project successfully underway!

ODNP Receives Year 2 of LSTA Funding!

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

The Oregon Digital Newspapers Program is happy to announce that we’ve received year 2 of funding through the Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) distributed by the Oregon State Library. The funds provided by this second year of this grant will support our project manager, the continued development of k-12 lesson plans, and graphic design for our Oregon Digital Newspapers search interface.

Extra! Extra!

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

We expect to begin posting our first digitized content from Oregon newspapers in the summer/fall of 2010.

In the meantime, you can still revisit Oregon’s history through the Library of Congress – National Endowment for the Humanities’ Chronicling America website. Keyword-searching the archived material from states that are already participating in NDNP can yield a wealth of articles about Oregon.

Over the next several weeks, we will be posting to this blog some links to get you started and  to convey some idea of what’s available.  We hope these historic materials will whet your appetite for the full online resource that’s to come!

*****

Our first item comes from the San Francisco Call, and commemorates the opening of the historic Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland:

“Fair Recalls Heroic Deeds Of Century Ago,”  from the San Francisco Call (CA), May 28, 1905

"Lewis & Clark," from the San Francisco Call, May 28, 1905, p.17

Phase 1 Newspaper Titles

Posted on by srabun@uoregon.edu

The preliminary titles for Phase 1 of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program have been selected.  (The title list is subject to change depending on quality of newspaper microfilm.)

National Digital Newspaper Program Titles:

Oregon Only Titles: