Oregon Digital Newspaper Program Menu

Bert Dunn, an avid Oregon Digital Newspaper Program supporter and contributor, will soon publish a book on Coquille, Oregon that uses ODNP newspapers for source material. It will be published by Arcadia Publishing as part of their “Images of America” series, and it will feature about 200 pictures and captions, as well as chapter narratives.

Bert described his searches on Historic Oregon Newspapers and how he used the website:

“I have been using the UO site to search for information on early sawmills, creameries and other businesses and individuals related to Coquille’s past.”

“As I work to write for a book about my hometown of Coquille, I have found the UO Digital Newspaper website to be an essential tool. I am consistently finding new information that fills gaps in our stories. Not only am I able to search my hometown papers for historic content but many other papers in the state in the same search. The search tools are flexible and powerful. With the papers fully digitized, even ads are preserved offering additional information about business products and services.”

“I really appreciate this UO service.  [Above] is one example of an ad from the Coquille City Herald, June 17, 1884.”

Thank you, Bert, and we look forward to reading your book!

Do you have a publication or project that uses newspaper content from ODNP? Let us know and we will feature it!

Yesterday, the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program launched the new website for Historic Oregon Newspapers. Developed from the Open-ONI initiative, the new site has an updated look-and-feel that’s easier to navigate and more consistent with web presence of UO Libraries. It also has a “This Day in History” feature that showcases a different newspaper every day that corresponds with that day’s date. New functions include browsing by date with the Calendar and an improved Advanced Search. An updated Map, along with a Location list, allows for simplified title access by city. Along with the updated site, we have developed a fundraising how-to guide to assist the public with funding their newspaper digitization. Several digitization projects are underway. We are frequently adding new stories and updates to the blog, so check back regularly!

Today, we are featured on the Digital Library Federation website as part of their Contribute Series!

Thank you to Jeremy Echols, Linda Sato, Duncan Barth, Azle Malinao-Alvarez, Tyler Stewart, and Holli Kubly for their hard work and contributions to the website!

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact us.

-Carolina and Sarah

If you think direct-to-consumer prescription medication advertising is bad today, take a look at the historic newspapers we have digitized on the Oregon Historic Newspapers website! Likely, if you have taken the time to peruse just a few issues, you will have noticed an overabundance of strange medication advertisements.

In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, a lack of adequate medical care in combination with few government regulations resulted in a flurry of business called the patent medicine industry. These questionable concoctions promised lofty claims, and in large part helped fund Oregon’s early newspapers through their advertisements.

Merchants had little obligation to truthfully describe the contents and effectiveness of their products, creating tonics, pills, and syrups that often contained dangerous substances such as opium, morphine, cocaine, and alcohol. While consumers might have found temporary relief from these ingredients, patent medicines were an unfortunate cause of accidental overdose, intoxication and addiction.

Next time you are on the Oregon Historic Newspapers website reading your favorite historic papers, take notice of the patent medicine advertisements on the side of the page; I’m sure you’ll find something that surprises you!

This fiscal year we added 87,606 pages of historic and currently published newspapers to the ODNP site!

We made improvements to the system and workflow for handling currently published e-editions of newspapers, and we are looking forward to adding more content this next year. There are several digitization projects underway!

Also, we have a few exciting additions to the goals of ODNP for next year:

To assist the public with fundraising for historic newspaper digitization, we will be creating a fundraising how-to guide with resources, strategies, and grant writing best practices for users of ODNP around the state to fund newspaper digitization.

We are also looking forward to updating the website with better usability, features, and search functionalities. The new blog header, designed by Azle Malinao-Alvarez, provides a small preview of the upcoming updates to the look and feel.

Please be sure to check the blog frequently for new posts. This year, we will be focusing on finding connections between the ODNP collections and other UO Library collections in our Special Collections and University Archives and Oregon Digital. See our most recent blog post by our student Jane Conway, which features Colonel John “Watermelon” Redington (1851-1935), an Oregon scout turned newspaper editor.

Thanks to the ODNP team for their hard work and agility this year as we have been refining the digital and born-digital processes and workflows. A special thank you to our programmer, Jeremy, and our production manager, Randy, who have worked the hardest on this project to create better systems for quality assurance.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let us know!

-Sarah and Carolina

The Oregon Free Press, published for only a year in 1848 by George L. Curry, is the second oldest newspaper in the state. Originally an employee of Oregon’s first published newspaper, the Oregon Spectator, Curry began the Free Press after a falling out with the editor. However, the periodicals curious amount of inconsistencies with the letter “w” is perhaps one of the more interesting nuances of this early Oregonian newspaper.

Starting up a newspaper during the early pioneering days of the Oregon territory was no easy feat, and Curry struggled with acquiring the supplies he needed. As a consequence of the difficulty of acquiring goods and services, the letter “w” in the Oregon Free Press has a variety of forms.

Pictured in the clippings below, the letter ‘w’ has either been formed by a normal piece of type, two ‘v’s’, or whittled out of wood by Curry himself.

The press in which Curry printed with was at one point owned by Catholic Missionaries operating in the Oregon Territory. The variations in the letter “w” can be attributed to its seldom use in French, the common language the missionaries printed in. Thus Curry, forced to accommodate for the lack of “w’s” used a combination of the above methods in his newspaper editions.

The Oregon Free Press offers fascinating insight into the struggles pioneers faced in the early years of Oregon. To read more about this newspaper title, check out ODNP’s essay on the paper here You can also read full issues of the title on our site here.

Written in reference to:

Turnbull, George S. History of Oregon Newspapers. Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort, 1939.

It’s been an exciting and eventful year for ODNP! We have added more historical newspaper content to the site. For current newspaper submissions, we have refined the process and workflow, and we are looking forward to adding more titles this upcoming year. We also won the Oregon Heritage Excellence Award!

We have had staffing changes. Sheila Rabun left the University of Oregon in August 2016 to become the Community and Communications Officer for IIIF, the International Image Interoperability Framework. Her years of service and the advancement of ODNP have been invaluable- thank you for everything, Sheila!

To fill her shoes, Carolina Hernandez, Journalism and Communication Librarian, and Sarah Seymore, Digital Collections Metadata Librarian, are now the primary contacts for ODNP. Carolina’s roles will be in research, outreach, collection development, and instruction for the ODNP content. Sarah is the primary contact for technical questions for submissions, digitization, ingest, and other back-end management and concerns. Please email us with any questions at cahernan@uoregon.edu and sseymore@uoregon.edu.

Our goals for 2017 are those of increasing our impact with greater access, promotion, and use of our collections. We call on your help to do this by spreading the word about the program and the importance of digitizing and preserving this content. Do you have stories about the impact of ODNP at your institution and for your patrons? Please let us know as we will be featuring user stories on our blog throughout the year! Moreover, we want to know: what do you want to see from ODNP this year? Let us know and share your stories!

Promotion of the services of ODNP is vital, and offering free, open access to content of historical record is important and necessary. ODNP would not be possible without the support of our subscribers and submitters. Thank you for helping us preserve Oregon history and stay tuned to the blog for more in the year ahead!

Greetings from the University of Oregon Libraries’ Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP)! We have been so busy lately, that we are just now announcing the exciting news – the ODNP has been awarded a 2016 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award from the Oregon Heritage Commission! Recognition, praise, and a beautiful ceramic plaque featuring the Oregon state capital building were presented to ODNP representatives on May 5, 2016 at the historic Reed Opera House in Salem as part of the 2016 Oregon Heritage Conference.

We are thrilled to receive this award and recognition! Special thanks to all of the ODNP Advisory Board members who have helped us determine priority content for digitization over the years, all of the partners that we have worked with to add content to the Historic Oregon Newspapers site, all of the staff involved in the ODNP since its inception in 2009.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP) was featured on Jefferson Public Radio this morning! Visit their site to listen to the interview with Sheila Rabun, Project Manager for the ODNP: http://ijpr.org/post/newspaper-history-preserved-online

The Historic Oregon Newspapers site has expanded its scope to include born-digital current newspapers from participating publishers around the state! News from 2015 and beyond is current now, but in a number of years it will become “historic,” so we are getting started early.

Traditionally, the University of Oregon Libraries has microfilmed the majority of newspapers from around Oregon, but microfilm production is becoming increasingly unviable. As we phase out our microfilm production operation, we are now working directly with publishers to make their current content keyword searchable and freely available to the public online at http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu. The following newspapers are now becoming available for 2015 and beyond. Use the “calendar view” to browse issues, or do a keyword search for specific content:

• Astoria – The Daily Astorian
• Baker City – Baker County Press
• Cannon Beach – Cannon Beach Gazette
• Cottage Grove  – Cottage Grove Sentinel 
• Dallas – Polk County Itemizer Observer
• Enterprise – Wallowa County Chieftain
• Florence – Siuslaw News 
• Grand Ronde – Smoke Signals
• Hermiston – Hermiston Herald
• Hood River – Hood River News
• John Day – Blue Mountain Eagle
• Keizer – Keizertimes
• Pendleton – East Oregonian
• Portland – Asian Reporter
• Portland – Portland Observer
• Portland – Willamette Week
• Saint Johns – St. Johns Review
• Salem – Capital Press East
• Salem – Capital Press West
• Seaside – Seaside Signal
• Sisters – The Nugget

Each of these newspapers has a different copyright statement, so please be aware of copyright restrictions when using current newspapers. Copyright information about each title can be found on our blog site at https://odnp.uoregon.edu/current-newspapers/participating-newspapers/, and copyright statements will appear at the bottom of the screen when viewing a page from one of these newspapers in the Historic Oregon Newspapers site.

Additional information about the digital program for current newspapers can be found on our blog site:

• Current Newspapers overview
• FAQ: Current Newspapers
• Documentation
• Participating Newspapers

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program!

Spring is in the air, and so is the desire for fresh attire to match the gaiety of the season. In 1921, spring fashion was a focus for historic Oregon newspapers, which, through pictorials, articles, and advertisements, relayed that year’s haute new looks to dedicated readers.

In 1921, historic Oregon newspapers‘ reportage of spring fashion was largely geared toward female readers, with photos featuring women’s clothing, footwear, and accessories such as hats, wraps, and gloves. Fashion reporters of the era looked to Paris, France, for the latest trends. After all, Paris was (and still is) the fashion capital of the world. Typical of the newspaper copy for these spring fashion spreads was what accompanied the above pictorial, published in the January 16, 1921, issue of the Sunday Oregonian: “Nothing is so fashionable as grey just now – the Paris craze for all shades of grey has reached America.” Aside from highlighting the color of the season, the above pictorial focused on “little fur wraps” (“easier to take care of than a bulky coat in a theater seat”), with the furs of choice being “Russian mink” and “smoke grey fox.” Rounding out the look were silk hats, chiffon frocks, silk stockings, and strap slippers.

The Sunday Oregonian continued its reportage on fur wraps in a pictorial that ran in the February 20, 1921, issue. In this same fashion feature, an image from which can be seen above, the newspaper went beyond talk of “Paris wraps for spring” and elaborated upon the latest in women’s hats, specifically noting that “nobody needs hatpins in low-setting millinery now in vogue.” (“Hatpins Again Are Being Taken Up as Ornaments, Not Being Essential.”) Among the “low-setting millinery now in vogue” were the “new turban from Lewis – one of the flat, saucer affairs that are so very smart this spring” and the one seen in the image above: “a low-crowned model on fine black milan, with flange brim of black satin and under the brim at the back is tucked a tuft of Erin green ostrich from which stray spiky tendrils of black ostrich. The hat has stunning lines and with the tall-collared spring wrap makes its wearer very smart indeed.”

In a February 27, 1921, pictorial, the Sunday Oregonian shifted its attention to women’s “Spring Street Suits Just from Paris.” The newspaper observed “these saucy little suits,” by French designers Drecoll, Bernard, Lanvin, and Jenny, have jackets that are “short and jaunty and coat fronts show vests of embroidered linen.” About the street suits shown in the image above, the Sunday Oregonian stated the Lanvin model on the left “is of black serge with a lining of white cashmere in the jacket and cape… The cape is detachable and may be left off on a warm day.” On the right is a street suit by Jenny, its “short, loose jacket part of a navy blue serge suit, is slashed below the waistline and in the slashes are godets of old rose poplin embroidered with navy blue silk. The silk embroidered rose poplin is also introduced in bands on collar and sleeve and in a yoke at the top of the skirt.” “Flashy hats” further accentuated these spring looks.

Within the pages of historic Oregon newspapers from 1921, modern looks in men’s spring fashion were likelier to appear in advertisements, rather than in pictorials or feature-length articles. Common were advertisements such as this one (seen below) by Pendleton, Oregon-based retailer Alexanders, which ran in the April 14, 1921, issue of the East Oregonian.

Instead of photographs of models wearing trendy attire, crisp line drawings illustrated the new spring fashions for men. The emphasis was on “reputation” and “quality.” “Hand-tailored workmanship” and “superior values” were touted. However, for men as well as women, the appeal of thinness and youth was deftly used to market the new styles. In smaller print, in the lower right-hand corner of the Alexanders print ad, the newspaper’s male readership was assured of the “slenderizing treatment of the close fitting coat which gives it youthfulness of line.” As early as 1921, thin was “in,” as was the desirability of youthfulness. This is decades before the rise of Twiggy and the “Youthquake” movement in the mid-century fashion world!

Although men’s fashions were likelier to be seen in advertisements than in pictorials or feature-length articles in historic Oregon newspapers published in 1921, there’s still the occasional news article that informed fashion-forward readers of fresh developments in men’s style. Two examples of such news articles spotlighting men’s fashion were published in the March 19, 1921, issue of the East Oregonian. Shown below, the articles “New Color Jones Offered in Spring Haberdashery” and “Simplicity Marks Spring Hats for Men” were penned by Otto A. Engel and Milton Conhaim, respectively. Both articles largely focused on hat trends for men, but in his article Engel went even further, reporting in great depth on the latest in shirts and neckwear. Declaring “smaller stripes this year,” “fiber silk shirts improve,” and “Scotch madras popular,” Engel gave East Oregonian readers the real scoop on what was current in men’s spring fashion. In his frank manner, he even noted, “There’s nothing really new in the pajama line,” and “No radical changes mark underwear, belts, jewelry, handkerchiefs and walking sticks.”

If you’ve ever wondered what the women and men of Oregon wore as winter turned into spring in the year 1921, look no further than historic Oregon newspapers. Through pictorials, articles, and advertisements, the spring fashions of 1921 were on full display. See for yourself today!