Oregon Digital Newspaper Program Menu

Throughout Oregon’s history, its citizens have always been inclined to look hopefully toward the future. New Years Day has always been an important holiday in the state, as the historic newspaper record will reveal. A search of Historic Oregon Newspapers or Chronicling America will yield a number of headlines and illustrations commemorating the arrival of a New Year. Below is an example from the December 31, 1922 Astorian that you won’t find on either of the web sites (because it falls outside the scope of dates digitized for this title.)

Note the fuming factory smokestacks in the background of the picture–this is a recurring motif in newspaper illustrations of the day. While we in the 21st Century tend to look at the pall of black smoke and say “Yuck! Pollution!”, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries smokestacks are commonly used to symbolize wealth, industry, modernization, and desirable economic growth. Awareness of the negative impacts of environmental pollution would not begin to enter the broader American consciousness for a few more decades. So this truly would have been the perfect image of a “Happy and Prosperous New Year” for most residents of Astoria in 1922.

Here at the beginning of another New Year we find a convenient opportunity to remind ourselves that the times are always changing.  —Jason A. Stone

With the onset of the winter holiday season, I’ve been looking through December issues of the historic newspapers, enjoying the nostalgic  illustrations, articles and advertisements from seasons past. You can do the same on Chronicling America, where issues of the Sumpter Miner and Klamath Falls Evening Herald are available for public viewing.

In turn-of-the-century Sumpter and Klamath Falls, people certainly got into the Christmas Spirit: when I performed a simple search on the word ‘Christmas,’ I received 1774 results!

As in the illustration above, use of the abbreviation ‘Xmas’ was rather common–and, it would seem, entirely uncontroversial–in these newspapers of the early 20th Century. (See Wikipedia for a concise explanation of the history of the Xmas abbreviation, which was never really intended to make any sort of political statement or to offend anyone.)

My search on ‘Hanukkah’ (variant spellings included!) failed to turn up a single item in either of the Oregon papers. (This is probably reflective of period demographics in Eastern Oregon–it will be interesting to retry the search once the titles from Portland and Salem are available.) The earliest reference to Hanukkah that appears anywhere in Chronicling America is an item from the Hebrew Observer reprinted in the December 24th, 1885 issue of the Daily Honolulu Press. The earliest full and detailed article about the Jewish Festival of Lights was published December 17, 1887 by the Waco Daily Examiner.

For the time being, at least, we can’t expect to find information on ‘Kwanzaa’ in Chronicling America: the first Kwanzaa celebration was in 1966-67, and the digitized newspapers only run through 1922.

Come back in a couple weeks, when we’ll take at look at historic Oregon ‘Happy New Years’ items. In the meantime… Happy Holidays!  —Jason A. Stone

You never know where historical research might take you…

I was looking around on the Internet this week, hoping to learn the full name of one P. C. Levar of Coos Bay, who had been editor and publisher of the Marshfield Coast Mail newspaper around the turn of the 20th century. While I was unable to discover what the “P. C.” stood for, I did unearth some unexpected information about the man’s writing career. As I discovered, Levar’s legacy rests not so much on anything he wrote while editor of the Coast Mail.  Rather, to the extent that he is still remembered today, it is largely owing to a letter of his that was published in the early film journal, Moving Pictures World.

The letter–in which Levar criticizes the Biograph Film Company for their underhanded replacement of the actress originally known as the ‘Biograph Girl’–is clear evidence that the Hollywood ‘star system’ was already beginning to develop in 1910. Levar’s epistle  is such an early and unambiguous example of what would eventually come to be known as ‘fan mail’ that the letter has been referenced, quoted, and even reproduced whole in a number of books about the formative days of the film industry, including Tom Gunning’s D.W. Griffith & the Origins of American Narrative Film, Eileen Bowser’s The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915, and Florence Lawrence, The Biograph Girl: America’s First Movie Star by Kelly R. Brown.

Here is the complete text of P. C. Levar’s letter:

Although he does not use her name (probably he did not even know it, as film actors were not credited in those days), the ‘true and original’ Biograph Girl whom Levar favors is almost certainly Florence Lawrence.  Lawrence is generally regarded by film scholars as the first true American movie star. Hers was an eventful, very colorful, and ultimately tragic life. Readers who would like to learn more are directed to her biographic entry in the northernstars movie database, as well as Mary L. Grau’s lengthy and detailed Blog article. At Chronicling America, a name search of all papers presently digitized yields 100 pages  with information on Florence Lawrence (see one exemplary page below). As if that weren’t enough, you can also read about her contributions to automotive engineering history. (Yes, the same Florence Lawrence!)

After her relationship with Biograph ended, Lawrence went on to work for other pioneering film production companies, including Lubin Studios, Independent, Universal and Victor. She would appear in more than 270 pictures; at the height of her career earning more than $1 million per year. Prints of her films have become rare, but on YouTube you can view her work in the 1909 Biograph short, ‘Those Awful Hats.’   —Jason A. Stone

Abigail Scott Duniway, acclaimed as “Oregon’s Mother of Suffrage,” was born on October 22, 1834. That makes today a most opportune time to announce that the suffragist newspaper that Duniway published and edited, The New Northwest of Portland, has been confirmed as our final title for digitization in NDNP phase 1!

We had to clear a couple of hurdles with this one:

1.) Confirming that The New Northwest qualified for funding based upon both NDNP project guidelines and the formalities of serials cataloging. Could Duniway’s journal rightly be called a newspaper, or was it more accurately a magazine? This may sound like hair-splitting, but these distinctions truly matter in the world of the library. We were pleased that The New Northwest was judged to be a newspaper, and therefore qualified for inclusion in NDNP.

2.) We discovered that our library’s service copies of The New Northwest microfilm were not matched by master negatives in our archive. In fact, we had none of the negatives on hand at all! Luckily, we managed to track down negatives at the Oregon Historical Society, who have generously agreed to provide us with copies of the negatives. (Libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions generally circulate positive prints, but are often much more reluctant about sharing copies of their master negatives. OHS really was exceptionally co-operative here, so thanks are due to them!)

2012 will mark the 100-year anniversary of woman’s suffrage in Oregon. Cultural institutions throughout the state will be commemorating this milestone, and we are very pleased that the paper that was at the forefront of the struggle, The New Northwest, will be available and accessible to the public via our digital resource.

In the meantime, Abigail Scott Duniway’s life remains, as always, a fascinating and informative subject.  Oregon Public Broadcasting has substantial Duniway web pages that are a great starting place for learning more about “the pioneer suffragist of the great Northwest.” For a wider overview of the history of woman’s rights and citizenship in Oregon, Kimberly Jensen’s article from the Oregon Historical Quarterly is recommended.

Those who follow our project may recall Karen Estlund’s trip to Astoria last February. In a previous Blog post, it was reported that she had returned to Eugene with a carload of historic Astorian newspapers on loan from the Astoria Public Library. Has anyone wondered what became of those issues?

While we have used existing microfilm as a source for most of our page scans, the Astorian was identified early on as a title that could use a good upgrade in filming. The existing microfilm had mostly been photographed half a century ago, from bound volumes of issues that were often in an exceedingly poor state of preservation. All of this was less than ideal. So, when it became apparent that we would have the budget to fund refilming of one title, the Astorian was an easy choice.

Now that this work has been completed, let’s take a moment to review the process of microfilming an historical newspaper–the work of our colleagues in the Image Services Department of Knight Library.

The first step in the microfilming process is to guillotine any issues that have been bound between covers. This is because pages that are filmed while still bound tend to produce gutter shadows, areas of uneven contrast and exposure, and other flaws. A far superior filmed image is obtained from a page that can be laid perfectly flat. Next comes a review of collation to make sure that issues and the pages within issues have been placed in the correct, chronological order. As page numbers were not originally printed on the Astorians, the numbers were hand-written in light pencil, in order to facilitate both filming and later page-searching by library patrons. At this stage, any wrinkles in the pages were also flattened using a steam iron, and rips and tears were mended with Filmoplast, a non-reflective adhesive tape specifically designed for archival paper documents.

Once the Astorians were fully prepped, they were then routed to the camera room. Here they were filmed using our planetary microfilm camera. The pages are placed on a flat copyboard and exposed to 35mm film stock. A positive print is struck from each master negative film reel, in order to check the quality of the filming work. When a reel passes quality review, the master negative is then duplicated to produce a negative copy that can be handled by collators with ODNP and, eventually, passed on to our vendor for digital scanning. The original negative is the archival copy.

More or less, this was the process followed for all 11,960 pages of the Astorian that were re-filmed for our project. You can judge the results here:

Heidi Scheidl, the student employee who completed most of this work, reports that she very much enjoyed handling the old Astorians. “I had a chance to read a lot of the articles,” Heidi says. “It gave a really good taste of what the 19th century writing style was like.”

For those who would like to learn more about the processes and history of microfilm and other imaging technologies, here is a website full of information and fun retro photos!  —Jason A. Stone

Another exciting season of college football is set to kick off this weekend, so it’s an ideal time to revisit the sports pages of yesteryear on Chronicling America.

With the University of Oregon Ducks preparing to defend their Pac-10 Conference title–and the Beavers of Oregon State once again looking like a formidable challenger for the Roses–we turn all the way back to the year 1917. This was the year that an Oregon team made its first January trip to Pasadena for the postseason game that would later come to be branded as the “Rose Bowl.” In those days, the team from the East was always regarded as a prohibitive favorite. Such was the case when UO faced off against the University of Pennsylvania.

It is an interesting exercise to compare coverage of the game from journals on the opposite coasts. In its January 2nd recap, the Klamath Falls Evening Herald sticks mostly to a blow-by-blow account of the action on the field. The post-game article in the Evening Public Ledger of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania focuses rather more on analysis and excuses for the game’s unexpected outcome. Published a week later, Penn team captain Neil Mathews’ reflection demonstrates good sportsmanship as the author attempts to balance the two perspectives on the big game.

Interesting trivia to note from these articles:

• Circa 1917, Oregon’s uniform colors were “blue and lemon yellow.” Green came later, apparently.
• The 25,000-30,000 in attendance were, at this time, the largest audience ever for a game on the West Coast.
• This contest, along with Cal’s defeat of Brown University in the previous year’s game, was instrumental in earning respect for college athletics in the West. The assumption had been that Eastern and Midwestern teams were inherently superior in both talent and tactics.
• Even at this early date, we hear of the controversial relationship between college sports and money. “The primary object of the game,” writes the reporter from Evening Public Ledger, “was to swell the receipts of the football season, and in this respect it was a success.”

Enjoy the season!

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.

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

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.

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.

Hope everyone had a fun and festive July Fourth.

Oregonians have long been accustomed to celebrating the holiday with fireworks… as the front page of the July 4, 1912 Klamath Falls Evening Herald will attest. Note the article occupying the three center columns in the lower half of the page: ‘Magnificent Display Fire-works On Lake To-night.’

The paper records a full itinerary of the pyrotechnic novelties to be shot off that evening. Apparently, 1912 citizens and guests of Klamath Falls enjoyed a show of ‘Aerial Wrigglers,’ ‘Fire Swans’, ‘Meteorites,’ ‘Monster Glow Worms,’ ‘Floating Gyroscopes’ and even a battery of  ‘President Taft Inauguration Bombs.’ How did your local fireworks show compare in 2010?

Just a timely little reminder to explore the Oregon newspaper content that’s recently been made available on Chronicling America!