When I was in high school, I worked in the basement in the old downtown Spokane library. My job was to retrieve materials patrons wanted that weren’t stored upstairs. They’d fill out little paper slips and send them down on the lift. Sometimes they’d want to read old newspapers, so I’d go wrestle a month’s worth of papers that were bound into one heavy book and send them back up. There’s nothing like flipping through old newsprint and getting your fingers all dirty.
These days, you’re more likely to read old newspapers on microfilm and, increasingly, online. That’s what this segment is about.
Each year, the National Endowment for the Humanities provides millions of dollars each year to projects aimed at digitizing old newspaper editions. Recently, the endowment awarded $4.5 million to digitalize historically significant newspapers from before 1963. Two hundred eighty thousand of those dollars are coming to Washington. The state library plans to digitize about 100,000 pages of Asian-American, African-American and World War II era papers.
Shawn Schollmeyer is the coordinator for the Washington Digital Newspaper Project.
Schollmeyer: “The grant is one of two projects that we’re doing. We have the Washington Digital Newspapers, which we help local communities digitalize their newspapers using Library and Services Technology Act funding. The new project is the one from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and that will be to help us participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program sponsored also by the Library of Congress.”
Doug Nadvornick: “So tell me a little bit about the specifics of this grant, and what kind of newspapers you’re going to be digitalizing.”
Schollmeyer: “The national grant for the National Digital Newspaper Program, all of the newspapers would be part of the public domain. So previously, prior grants allowed us to digitalize newspapers up through 1922. Those are considered public domain and no longer under copyright. The new grant will allow us to do through 1963. But the newspapers still have to be copyright free, so there can’t be an active publisher. And then it will also help us focus on communities that are underserved, such as the Asian-American and African-American communities. We’re looking for newspapers specifically in those areas for this grant.”
One hundred thousand pages may sound like a lot, but it isn’t when you consider how much has been printed over the years.
Schollmeyer: “That actually goes very quickly if you’re talking about one paper that is a daily. If it’s a weekly or a monthly, the older newspapers tend to run four to eight pages, and the newer papers of course are a lot longer. The first time we did this grant, we were able to do maybe 20 or 25 titles. And they were shorter runs of smaller community papers that were weekly. And that’s what we expect to do this year. Hopefully about 20 titles or so.”
Nadvornick: “Do you have a committee or something that helps you decide which ones to do the digitalization of, and which ones to leave?”
Schollmeyer: “Yes. Part of the grant allows us to start an advisory council. We’ll work with people who have newspaper collections at universities and historical organizations across the state. We want to have a good representation of the whole state, and different communities that we don’t have in our collecting already.”
Shawn Schollmeyer says projects like these are important because these papers show how communities were affected by historical events.
“It’s kind of surprising when you go through newspapers page by page. It really reveals a lot about the history of the community, not just the specific events and things that happened in an isolated manor. It really unfolds what happens in that community despite major events that are happening,” she said.
You can learn more about the project by logging on the Washington State Library’s website, and clicking the “newspaper” link. The page includes a link to the 23 titles that Washington has already contributed to the project.