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.

As with any historical project, the Digital Newspaper Program sometimes takes on the character of detective work. Here’s an example from the past week in the office.

While performing verification on the latest batch of digital scans we received from our vendor, I happened across the following image and caption in the pages of the Salem Willamette Farmer:

My eye was drawn to this and I was inspired to copy the image in order to later share it with John Taylor, the Quality Control Specialist on our project. John is currently a graduate student in the department of Philosophy here at the U of O. One of his areas of concentration is pragmatist philosophy, and this quarter he’s been taking a truly immersive class on James. I intended this to be nothing more than a lighthearted demonstration that the digitized papers will feature content of relevance to all of us, no matter our field of study. But then the plot thickened…

While John didn’t immediately recognize “The Powers of Men”–the “most talked of” article by James cited in the photo caption–he thought it was probably an alternate title for James’ famous work, “The Energies of Men.” I started doing a little research to confirm this, and quickly determined that John was almost certainly correct. However, a new problem now came to light: the date of the Willamette Farmer issue this came from was April 20, 1883… yet all the bibliographic sources I was finding indicated the article’s date of publication as 1907. We were suddenly facing a mystery of rather overt anachronism.

In search of an explanation, I referenced our collation records for the paper in question. The records listed this issue as ten pages; the Farmer was usually published as eight pages. The two extra pages–including the one with Prof. James on it–were notated as a ‘special advertising section.’ No date, issue or volume number were recorded on these pages.

With this information in hand, the most likely explanation began to take shape: the ‘special section’ does not belong with this issue at all–it is contaminant material! It was doubtlessly published at a much later date (sometime between 1907 and James’ death in 1910), but erroneously got collated in with these pages of the Farmer when they were originally being sorted and bound for library use. Then, sometime later, this mistake was perpetuated when the volumes were microfilmed. We probably wouldn’t have caught it, either… except that I copied the photo to share with John. Pragmatically, you’d have to say we got a bit lucky. Thank you, Professor James!  —Jason A. Stone

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.

As regular readers will already know, the first digitized content from historic Oregon newspapers should be coming online by the fall.  In preparation, we’ve been reviewing and collating some great old papers.  This intensive process doesn’t always afford us as much opportunity to pause and read the articles as we’d like… but, from time to time, a headline or graphic is simply too compelling to avoid catching our attention.

That was certainly the case with these woodcut illustrations, which first ran in the July 26, 1862 issue of the Jacksonville Oregon Sentinel.  With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the accompanying article tells the tale of a group of intrepid explorers venturing into the Oregon wilderness in search of trout.  Instead, they end up encountering a far more incredible native fauna:

Consider this a sneak peak at some of the more esoteric news content that ODNP will soon be making available on the Web.  And remember… when out and about in Oregon, watch out for those Bandikoots!  —Jason A. Stone

You never know what you’ll find on the Internet…

In writing the newspaper history essay for the Burns Times-Herald, our essayist, Isolde Raftery, was trying to discover the full name of one D.L. Grace.  Along with his wife, Nellie, D.L. Grace founded the East Oregon Herald — an important predecessor of the Times-Herald — in 1887.  In common with many men of the 19th Century, Mr. Grace seems to have preferred to use his initials in place of his full name.  Thus far, we have been unable to discover any clues about what “D.L.” might stand for.  (Please contact us if you have any insights.)

What Isolde did find, however, is this image, courtesy of the nonprofit USGen Web’s Tombstone Transcription Project:

According to the source, this grave is located at Cove Cemetery in Union County, Oregon.  The adjacent grave site of  “Nellie R. Grace” is also recorded, so we’ve almost certainly located the man we’ve been looking for: although, even on his memorial stone, only his initials are given!

While this photo brought us no closer to the specific information for which we were searching, it was nonetheless fascinating to find further visual evidence of a person who previously was known to us only as a name on the masthead of old newspapers.  Little discoveries like this certainly help to enliven the process of historical research.

Agriculture has always played an important part in the economy of our state and the greater Northwest as a whole.  This week, we’re highlighting an historic Pullman Herald (WA) article that offers a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the dairy industry in our region.  Note the central role that geographic and climate diversity play in the production of dairy products: dairymen on the “dry side” of the Cascades face a different set of opportunities and challenges than their colleagues on the “wet side.”  Also of interest is the prescience displayed by the author of this article (published in 1915)  in his anticipation of certain supply-and-demand trends that would continue to impact the dairy industry throughout the remainder of the century.

• The newspaper synonym ‘gazette’ comes from a Renaissance-era Venetian currency, the gazetta.  One of these small coins was the price a citizen paid in 1556 for the Notizie scritte, official printed announcements of government affairs.
• Our project’s digitization efforts encompass the years 1890-1920; the  period known as the “Golden Age” of print media.  Newspapers had their widest readership and greatest influence during this era.
• Increasingly, the Web is the contemporary medium of choice for accessing newspaper content.  According to the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper Websites draw over one-third (37%) of all Web users—an average monthly unique audience of 72 million as of 2009.
• According to 2008 figures collected by the World Association of Newspapers, the top newspaper by circulation is the Japanese-language Yomiuri Shimbun, with an average daily circulation of 14,067,000.  (This is about 6 times the circulation of USA Today!) In fact, the top five papers by circulation are all from Japan. While no one disputes that Japan is a nation of dedicated newspaper readers, some have claimed that the circulation numbers of Japanese papers are routinely inflated by “Oshigami,” the institutionalized process of circulation exaggeration.
• What are the oldest newspapers still being published today?
  • Oldest in the World:  Post- och Inrikes Tidningar (Sweden), began 1645
  • Oldest in English Language:  The London Gazette (UK), began 1665
  • Oldest in the United States:  The Hartford Courant (CT), began 1764
  • Oldest in Oregon:  The Portland Oregonian, began 1850

This week, we’re returning to Chronicling America to highlight a 1907 front page article from the National Tribune of Washington, D.C., reporting the creation and extension of the U.S. National Forest system.

It is interesting to note the environmental consciousness expressed in this piece.  Cautionary lessons drawn from the deforestation of the Old World are cited, and “avaricious and unscrupulous timber grabbers” are railed against.  The story editorializes in favor of government intervention, not only to protect the woodlands and waterways of the West, but also to insure that all the Forests’ resources–including agricultural land, grazing and mineral rights–are fairly allocated and utilized in a wise way.  In the first decade of the 20th Century, the concepts of environmental protection and economic development often went hand-in-hand.

Of course, Oregon receives a good deal of coverage in this article, as our state boasted no less than eight of the new National Forests: Ashland, Cascade, Coquille, Imnaha, Siskiyou, Tillamook, Umpqua and Wenaha.  The topography and resource profile of each of these Forests at the time of their founding is described in good detail.  The article is also well-illustrated with etchings of the U.S. Forest Service badge, a ranger’s cabin, and a man at work marking timber for cutting.

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.

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!