Acting as an umbrella organization for all Asian American groups on campus, the Asian Student Association published East Wind: The Asian American Student Voice. In 1998, the focus of the publication was to share Asian American culture and experience with students at the University and surrounding community through educational, service, and social events. In addition, it sought to invoke change to the University’s cultural diversity course curriculum and faculty demographic to actively reflect and be representative of Asian Americans on campus.
Now named the Asian American Students Association (AASA at UNC-CH), the Association’s mission is to advance the interests and needs of the UNC-CH’s Asian/Asian American student population. To do this they provide members with resources and opportunities to define themselves Asian American’s roles as part of American culture through 1) uniting students interested in Asian/Asian American culture, 2) promoting Asian/Asian American cultural awareness, and 3) encouraging dialogue about the Asian American identity.
A frequent topic discussed in issues of East Wind is the experience of double consciousness as an Asian American. Introduced in 1903 by W.E.B. DuBois (pronounced “Do-Boys”) in The Souls of Black Folk, the concept of double consciousness, in very simplified terms, is a feeling that you have two or more social identities which makes it difficult to develop a sense of self. Melissa Lin writes about her experience and frustration with double consciousness in her article titled “The Asian American Experience” in the Spring 2001 issue of East Wind.
In her article, “The Asian American Experience,” Melissa Lin writes about her frustration and experience with double consciousness as an Asian American. A first generation Chinese American, Lin emphasizes the importance of getting to understand oneself with cultural identity being a large part of that. She recounts trying to redefine the Asian heritage that she viewed through her parents as well as her realization that being Asian American made her both different and affected how others treated her in America and Asia. Lin concludes that the Asian American experience in 2001 “can at best be to live in both spheres, continuously adapting,” so that she, along with others, can create a niche for themselves somewhere in the middle.
The same 2001 issue presents a glimpse into anime and Pokémon’s rise in popularity in the United States. Although seen as a ploy created by advertisers and the anime industry by older anime fans at the time, Pokémon reached (and continues to hold) an incredible level of popularity in the early 2000s.
Before the late 1990s/early 2000s, it was difficult to find or watch anime on cable television in the United States. The author, Melissa Loon, credits the early Pokémon explosion with pushing “anime to new heights in North America.” After the explosion, supply began to accommodate the demand with video stores, movie theaters, and basic cable beginning to offer anime as part of their selections. Whether a ploy or not, Pokémon and the anime industry remain incredibly popular in the United States with a market value in the billions.
Since 1751, North Carolina newspapers have been one of the most valuable resources for researching our state’s history. They are also one of the most prolific, and demand for newspaper digitization is an area where we struggle even making a dent.
Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina and a new partnership with G. R. Little Library at Elizabeth City State University, that dent just got a little bigger. ECSU is now home to our first satellite location, and the staff there are focused on print newspaper digitization.
In addition to meeting demand, setting up a satellite location in the eastern part of the state will diminish travel time for eastern partners interested in getting papers from their collections online. All materials will be scanned on a new large format scanner by the digitization technicians at ECSU. Then, after the images have metadata, they’ll be sent to Chapel Hill where they’ll be uploaded to the newspaper site on our page.
Our ECSU colleagues are currently working on papers from Northampton and Bertie counties. We’ll be working with our easternmost partners for more materials to scan in the coming months.
Zaina Goggins, Vicky Tillett, and Barry Ward work with a new scanner at ECSU Libraries.
Five new large format photographs have been added to DigitalNC’s image collection thanks to our partners at Johnson C. Smith University. A historically Black university, Johnson C. Smith University has been a fixture in Charlotte, North Carolina since 1867.
As these new photos are all from the early 1900s, you may notice an institution name change between the image titles. First established as Biddle Memorial Institute, Johnson C. Smith University was known as Biddle University between 1876 and 1923 before arriving at its current name.
Several of these images capture traditional university moments, such as graduation, class photos, and reunions.
Of note is a panoramic photo taken during a 1929 rivalry baseball game. This candid shot of the crowd avidly watching an Easter Monday match between Johnson C. Smith University and Livingstone College depicts just how well attended baseball games were at the time.
As would have been well known in the early 1900s, white baseball teams barred Black players from joining their leagues, effectively segregating the sport. Black communities thus formed their own professional baseball leagues, culminating in a national organization known as the Negro National League, organized by Andrew (Rube) Foster in 1920. Baseball continued to be a popular and lucrative enterprise for the Black community throughout the mid-1900s, splitting into western and eastern circuits. The last of the leagues folded in 1962. While Johnson C. Smith University no longer has a baseball team, spectators can still enjoy following the women’s softball team, the Golden Bulls.
To see the newest photos in their entirety, click here. To view all images from Johnson C. Smith University, click here. And to learn more about Johnson C. Smith University, you can visit their home page here.
About two years ago, we had the honor of hosting a group of students from Wilmington who were studying one of the most politically and socially devastating moments in the state’s history–the Wilmington Coup and Race Riots of 1898. Their efforts centered around locating and studying the remaining issues of the newspaper at the center of that event, the Wilmington Daily Record. Owned and operated by African Americans, this successful paper incited racists who were already upset with the political power held by African Americans and supporters of equality. During the Coup, the Record’s offices were burned and many were killed. Thanks to these students, their mentors, and cultural heritage institutions, you can now see the seven known remaining issues of the Daily Record on DigitalNC.
Our main contact on this project has been John Jeremiah Sullivan, a well known North Carolina author and editor. He originally approached us back in 2017 to enlist our help and, since then, has been working with a cohort of supporters, volunteers, and students to dig deeper into the Daily Record and to raise further awareness of its history. Today we’re excited to share the Project’s latest efforts in Sullivan’s own words below.
Daily Record Project Historians, taken by Harry Taylor in May 2017 at the Cape Fear Museum
Highlights
Over the past few years, Wilmington middle school students have been combing through newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, and other publications contemporaneous with The Daily Record searching for content from the Record that is quoted in those sources.
Their efforts yielded numerous quotes, which have been assembled into what they’re calling a “Remnants” issue of the Record.
Literary content, biographical information about the Record’s editors, Wilmington political news and more can be found in this issue.
For the first time in one place you can read content that was published in issues of the Record that may no longer exist.
The Daily Record Project
by John Jeremiah Sullivan
“For the past four years, Joel Finsel and I, in conjunction with the Third Person Project, have been meeting weekly with groups of Wilmington 8th-graders to learn as much as we can about the Wilmington Daily Record, the African American newspaper destroyed at the start of the race massacre and coup d’état that turned Wilmington upside down in November of 1898. At the heart of the original Daily Record Project was an attempt to locate any surviving copies of the paper. Books and essays about the massacre always include a sentence along the lines of, ‘Sadly no copies remain,’ but it seemed impossible that they could all have disappeared. After three years’ hunting, we were able to identify seven copies–three in Wilmington, at the Cape Fear Museum (the staff historian there reached out to make us aware of their existence), three at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and one at the State Archives of North Carolina in Raleigh. (The latter is a mostly illegible copy of the issue containing Alex Manly’s editorial of August 18, 1898, the article seized on by white supremacists as a pretext for stirring up race-hatred in the months before the massacre.) These seven copies, thanks to the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, can now be examined online by anyone with an Internet connection. For the first time in more than a hundred years, it is possible to read one of the most famous and important African American newspapers of the late-nineteenth century.
“When those seven copies had been thoroughly read through and annotated, and it did not seem that any more were going to surface (at least not in the near future), we found ourselves faced with the question of “What next?” Should we discontinue the project? We had no desire to do that—it had been too much fun and we were learning too much. We had developed rewarding relationships with the three middle schools that sent their students to study with us: Williston School, D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy, and the Friends School of Wilmington. The Daily Record Project had become a kind of field laboratory for excavating more information about the events of 1898 and Wilmington history more largely. The last thing we wanted was to shut that down.
John Jeremiah Sullivan addressing the Daily Record Project class at DC Virgo Preparatory Academy, 2019
“We had noticed, in the course of studying the seven copies, that there did exist, in various sources from that period, isolated fragments of text from various issues of the Record that may no longer exist. We were finding these fragments in other newspapers. Just as publications do today, papers were reprinting one another’s material. Sometimes it was in the form of a quotation—several paragraphs, or even just a sentence. Sometimes whole articles were being re-published. In a couple of cases, the text survived by way of advertisement: a traveling circus, for instance, had liked what the Record said about it when it passed through Wilmington, and used that paragraph in announcing future appearances. We started wondering how many of these “ghost” stories might exist. The more we looked, the more we found. We enlisted the 8th graders to help us search. They turned up even more stuff. The range of sources we were using expanded. From old newspapers we moved on to magazines and books and pamphlets and letters. Often the writers or editors doing the quoting were critical of, or even hostile to, the Record and its politics. In attacking pieces from the Record that had offended them, they were unwittingly preserving more of that newspaper’s copy for future generations.
“By the time it was over, we had a folder containing scores of these “remnants,” as we were calling them, enough to create an entire new issue–a “ghost issue”–of the Daily Record, and that is what we have done.
“To create the actual issue, we worked with a brilliant graphic designer in New York named Stacey Clarkson James, who for many years had been the Art Director at Harper’s Magazine. I had worked with Stacey at Harper’s many years ago and have collaborated with her many times since. She exceeded even our high expectations by designing a newspaper issue that is not so much an imitation of the original Daily Record as a resurrection. She went in and crafted, by hand, a typeface that matches the now-extinct one used by Alexander Manly and the original editors. Then she laid out the pages according to the old 1890s press-style, even dropping in advertisements that we knew to have appeared in the Record. At the top it says REMNANTS. We gasped when we saw it.
“On the second page, above the masthead, can be seen a list of sources we used. There are a lot of them. The very size and range of the list shows the scope of the Record’s notoriety in its day. It was being read in many parts of the country.
“Maybe the most interesting thing about this issue is that, because it consists only of material that other publications found interesting enough to re-print, it winds up forming a kind of Greatest Hits compilation (though all of these “hits” have been buried in other papers until now). It’s a fascinating issue to read. There are articles on politics, culture, and social life, as well as strange unplaceable pieces, like the one about a man in Arkansas who caught fire in his orchard and just kept burning. No one could put him out. We still aren’t sure what that one means.
“Two of many things worth highlighting within the “Remnants” issue:
Charles W. Chesnutt, Charles Chesnutt Collection, Fayetteville State University Library.
“First–at the center of the issue is Charles Chesnutt’s short story, “The Wife of His Youth.” Chesnutt was, of course, one of the first great African-American fiction writers, and the novel that many consider to be his greatest work, The Marrow of Tradition, is a re-telling of the events of 1898, set in a fictionalized Wilmington that he calls Wellington. Chesnutt had many and deep ties to this city, more than most scholars are aware. (His cousin, Tommy Chesnutt, was the “printer’s devil” or apprentice at the Daily Record–you can find his name on the masthead on page 2.) “The Wife of His Youth” is probably Chesnutt’s best-known story. What’s curious is how we learned that it ran in the Daily Record. In Chesnutt’s published correspondence, there is a letter to Walter Hines Page, his editor at the Atlantic Monthly. It’s basically a letter of complaint: Chesnutt is telling Page that Alex Manly had reprinted the story (serially) in the Record, without having asked permission. At the time of that writing the Record had already been burnt and Manly had fled Wilmington, so Chesnutt essentially says, I guess we can give him a pass… But the complaint contained valuable information, because it tells us that the Record had an ongoing literary dimension. Manly was likely running stories and poems quite frequently—one of the seven surviving copies also contains a short story, “The Gray Steer” by one Frank Oakling. It’s on page 3 of the August 30th, 1898 issue.
Alexander Manly, in the John Henry William Bonitz Papers #3865, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Second–readers will notice that at the end of the “Remnants” issue, in the last couple of columns on the last page, there is a series of articles from not the Wilmington Daily Record but the *Washington* Daily Record. These represent probably the most exciting discovery we made during this most recent session of the Daily Record Project. The way the story of 1898 traditionally gets told, the massacre and coup d’état marked the end of the Manly brothers’ journalistic careers: they left the city, their ambition blighted, and sank into relative obscurity. The reality could not have been more different. It turns out that the Manlys went almost immediately to Washington, D.C., and re-established the Daily Record there. Before a year was out, they had the press up and running. They operated the Daily Record for four more years in the capital, then handed it off to another editor, who ran it for another six or seven. One of their articles included here is a stirring anti-imperialist denunciation of American military intervention in the Philippines. Another describes the renaissance in African-American literary activity that was felt to be happening around the turn of the century. As far as we can determine, these few pieces represent the only extant copy from the *Washington* Daily Record, for its entire decade-long run.
“There is much more worth unpacking, but we want to allow visitors to the NC Digital Heritage Center’s website to have the fun of doing that themselves.
“Long live the Daily Record. Thank you for reading.
“There are a lot of people to thank. First, the incredible 8th-grade students participated in the “Remnants” session of the Daily Record Project. It was a privilege to work with them and be around their energy:
Ridley Edgerton
Bella Erichsen
Dymir Everett
Love Fowler
Malakhi Gordon
Heaven Loftin
Katy McCullough
Juan Mckoy
Shalee Newell
Isis Peoples
Nakitah Roberts
Gabe Smith
Maria Sullivan
Latara Walker
Ramya Warren
“Second, the adults (teachers, administrators, chaperones, donors, friends, and Third Person Project members) who contributed every week to making this year’s work possible:
Rhonda Bellamy
Dan Brawley
Laura Butler
Stacey Clarkson James
Michelle Dykes
Clyde Edgerton
Brenda Esch
Joe Finley
Cameron Francisco
Sabrina Hill-Black
Mariana Johnson
Trey Morehouse
Tana Oliver
Donyell Roseboro
Elliot Smith
Beverley Tetterton
Larry Reni Thomas
Candace Thompson
Leyna Varnum
Tony Ventimiglia
Florence Weller
The Cape Fear Museum
NC State Archives
The Schomburg Center
“And finally, a shout-out to the Digital Heritage Center. Thanks to you, more than 120 years after white supremacists tried to erase the Daily Record, people are reading it again.”
Front page of the Fall 1994 issue of UNC ASA’s East Wind newspaper
Seven issues of East Wind, a publication of UNC Chapel Hill‘s Asian Students Association, are now available online at DigitalNC. Started in 1993, the paper appeared roughly once a semester for the first several years of its run. The issues now on DigitalNC (December 1993-Spring 1998) cover a wide range of topics relevant to the Asian-American student community at UNC. With its editorials, advertisements for upcoming events, restaurant reviews, and much more, East Wind provides a forum for both ASA members and others to promote, criticize, and discuss Asian-American culture from numerous angles. Much of the paper’s contents focus on issues of race and identity within the Asian-American community.
The newly digitized issues of East Wind are another addition to the already considerable amount of UNC Chapel Hill materials currently hosted at DigitalNC. For more information about East Wind and the Asian Students Association at UNC, visit The Carolina Story and its exhibit on UNC student organizations.
Mascots are a complicated phenomenon. They inspire a spectrum of reactions: ridicule, ambivalence, or fierce loyalty. With thousands of yearbooks online, all of us here at the Digital Heritage Center have probably spent more time looking at yearbooks than anyone else you’re likely to meet. Mascots are a common theme.
I’ve been working on today’s post for quite some time; unable to find a history or comprehensive list of mascots in North Carolina I decided to compile one myself. So here’s a stab at a college mascot overview, drawn from yearbooks and other campus publications. Let me know what I’ve missed or gotten wrong!
Children
In the early 20th century, schools frequently chose children as mascots or sponsors, whether for a sports team or for a particular class. The earliest example we’ve found on DigitalNC is from a 1910 publication by Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) in Wilson, which shows Elizabeth Settle Caldwell as the Senior Class sponsor.
Elizabeth Settle Caldwell, First North Carolina Mascot? From the 1910 Pine Knot yearbook, Atlantic Christian College.
Ms. Caldwell was the daughter of Jesse Cobb Caldwell, the college president. From what we’ve been able to tell, children mascots were frequently younger siblings of students, teachers, or others associated with the school. Students mention that Ms. Caldwell brought “solace to many a lonely, homesick heart” and this may be why children were chosen – to foster a feeling of family and comfort among students. We’ve seen several references to mascots being elected or being chosen through competition, although what this might be we haven’t been able to discover. The trend of choosing children as mascots seems to continue through the 1960s. The latest one we found is Dawn, the Senior Class mascot at Peace College (now William Peace University) in 1966.
Animals
Animal mascots span schools across the state, whether it’s Rameses at UNC-Chapel Hill or WCU’s Catamount. The bulldog and different types of cats win out as most frequently adopted. Pictures of live animal mascots start to appear in yearbooks in the early 1900s, and continue today although much less frequently. For a variety of reasons, including concerns expressed by animal rights activists, schools have shifted away from actual animals to students dressing up like animals, as you’ll see later on in this post.
“Buc” is described here as East Carolina University’s first mascot. From the 1959 Buccaneer yearbook.
Characters
While about half of the four-year college mascots in North Carolina are animals, most of the others are characters that are historic, mythical, or extraordinary in nature. From what I’ve seen in NC yearbooks, humans dressing up as the school mascot really got traction in the 1960s. Initially, these costumes weren’t the fuzzy creations we think of today, but rather less complicated ensembles where the mascot’s identity (his or her face and body) was often apparent. Yosef the Mountaineer, beloved icon of Appalachian State University, was created sometime around 1942 and looked like this in the 1960s:
Yosef the Mountaineer, aka James Randle Tedder (we think). From the 1969 Rhododendron yearbook, Appalachian State University.
One of my favorites has to be this picture of Duke Blue Devil, from 1950:
The Blue Devil. From the 1950 Chanticleer yearbook, Duke University.
Perhaps it was too hard to maintain a degree of consistency as students graduated over the years, and mascot anonymity seemed like a better idea. Whatever the reason, you start to see fuzzy, oversized costumes with gigantic headpieces in the late 1970s.
The Big Costumes
Whether animal or character, plush mascots that include a single piece body suit with a large plastic or cloth-covered head is something most Americans can identify with, thanks to professional sports. Colleges in North Carolina really embraced these costumes through the 1980s. Here’s what the UNC-Wilmington Seahawk looked like in 1987:
The Seahawk. From the 1987 Fledgling yearbook, UNC-Wilmington.
Some schools have developed multiple mascots dedicated to different audiences. It seems like the difficulty with these types of costumes is how to pull off a fierce facial expression that doesn’t come off as goofy or too scary for children. I think this picture from Davidson College sums it all up:
The Davidson Wildcat and … friends. From the 1983 Quips and Cranks yearbook.
I will also take this opportunity to mention a mascot that routinely makes the “wait … what?” list – the Campbell University Fighting Camels:
The Campbell Camel. From the 1983 Pine Burr yearbook.
Even the humans and human-like creatures are clothed in oversized costumes these days. Wake Forest University’s Deacon is a dapper chap:
Wake Forest’s Deacon poses with fans. From the 1985 Howler yearbook.
In addition to the Demon Deacons and the Blue Devils, North Carolina boasts a number of other spiritual mascots: North Carolina Wesleyan’s Battling Bishops, Belmont Abbey’s Crusaders, and Guilford College’s Quakers. Meredith College’s teams are known as the Avenging Angels (formerly just the Angels). While Elon University’s mascot is now the Phoenix, before 2000 they were the Fighting Christians:
The Elon Fighting Christian mascot with cheerleaders. From the 1986 Phi Psi Cli yearbook.
Two schools break with the animal/human tradition in North Carolina. The Brevard College Tornadoes and the Louisburg College Hurricanes. Weather phenomena mascots are always difficult to pull off. I couldn’t find one for Brevard, but Louisburg, which currently has a bird mascot, had “Louie” up until 2006:
Louie, the former Louisburg College Hurricanes mascot. From the 1996 The Oak yearbook.
Who knows when the next mascot sea change will happen. Below is a list of mascots in North Carolina; let us know if we got anything wrong. Which one is your favorite?
First “Moonlight School” Opens in Wake County, Danbury Reporter, October 6, 1915
In the early 20th century, at least 1 in 10 North Carolinians wouldn’t have been able to read this blog post (had it been printed out, of course). Estimates from the 1910 census suggest that 140 out of every 1000 white males were illiterate; numbers were less accurate for women and African Americans, but illiteracy rates were probably higher among those populations. James Y. Joyner, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the time, called it a duty of the state to improve the lot of these “grown-up children.”
Adopting a model used in Kentucky, North Carolina began holding “Moonlight Schools” to educate adults who were unable to write or read English. Moonlight schools were held in the evenings so working adults could attend. They operated throughout the state and relied on volunteering teachers, university students, and local civics clubs. The article to the right, from the October 6, 1915 issue of the Danbury Reporter, describes the opening of the first moonlight school in Wake County.
Lessons for use in the Moonlight Schools in North Carolina, The Courier (Asheboro), November 4, 1915
In October 1915, North Carolina newspapers carried articles describing Governor Craig’s proclamation of November 1915 as “Moonlight School Month.” Throughout that month papers shared sample lessons in not only reading and writing but also basic arithmetic and general knowledge. As public sentiment gathered behind the movement, local papers reported on their counties’ efforts in eradicating illiteracy: “Illiteracy doomed in Transylvania,” “The Moonlight School will Enable You to Be Master of Your Own Fate.” Articles talking about the diligence and appreciation of both the students and teachers were also common.
After Joyner turned over his position as State Superintendent of Public Instruction to E. C. Brooks, the term “moonlight school” is no longer found in the official reports coming from that office. Instead, the report from 1920-1922 discusses “classes for adult beginners,” which were held in over 50 counties. The term gradually transitioned to “adult education,” although we’re unsure why “moonlight school” fell out of favor. This article from The Pilot newspaper in 1938 describes the waxing and waning of interest in promoting adult education throughout the early 20th century. It also describes how the WPA had taken up the cause, cleverly zeroing in on identifying those who signed their drivers licenses with a simple cross mark.
You can learn even more about moonlight schools by browsing through related articles in the newspapers collection on DigitalNC.
Sign pointing microfilm users to different online resources. Taken in Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection Reading Room, UNC-Chapel Hill.
[This post updated July 2017.]
Newspaper digitization is challenging for a number of reasons (refer to our previous post). Although we’re biased, if you’re interested in accessing North Carolina newspapers online you’re actually pretty lucky; North Carolina is positioned well ahead of many other states. Below we’ve listed, in descending order of size, all of the major historic online newspaper databases sponsored by North Carolina institutions that are on our radar.
Name: Newspapers.com Dates: 1751-2000 Coverage: Statewide Amount Online: 3,500,000+ pages Details: The North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill Library recently partnered with Newspapers.com to digitize millions of pages of North Carolina newspapers. These are accessible for free at the State Archives of North Carolina or UNC-Chapel Hill’s Library, or you can view them anywhere at newspapers.com for a monthly fee. As of July 2017, NC LIVE also makes these papers available to member libraries and their card holders. While there are other vendors out there with historic North Carolina newspapers, this is the most comprehensive to date.
Name: The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center Coverage: Statewide Dates: 1824-2013 Amount Online: 640,000+ pages Details: Each year we receive LSTA funding from the State Library of North Carolina to digitize newspapers. Part of that funding goes toward papers on microfilm, for which we ask for title nominations from libraries and archives. We also digitize some newspapers from print (mostly college and university student newspapers) as well as small runs of community papers that have not been microfilmed.
Name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, National Digital Newspaper Program Grant Award Coverage: Statewide Dates: 1836-1922 Amount Online: 100,000+ pages Details: UNC-Chapel Hill is currently in its second round of providing selected historic newspapers for digitization and sharing through the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. These issues are searchable along with a selection of titles from other states.
Name: University of North Carolina at Greensboro Library / Greensboro Museum Dates: 1826-1946 Coverage: Town of Greensboro and surrounding area Amount Online: 5,000+ issues Details: The Greensboro Historical Newspapers collection includes a variety of papers from that area, including World War II military base papers.
Name: The State Archives of North Carolina Dates: 1752-1890s Coverage: Statewide Amount Online: 4,000+ issues Details: The State Archives of North Carolina actively preserves, microfilms, and digitizes newspapers. While most of these are not currently available online, they have shared some of the earliest on their website.
Name: East Carolina University Library Dates: 1887-1915 Coverage: Town of Greenville and surrounding area Amount Online: 1,800+ issues Details: ECU’s Digital Collections include The Eastern Reflector, a community paper published in Greenville.
While more focused, college and university papers (especially earlier issues) often included local community news. In addition to those featured on DigitalNC, here’s a list of other school papers online:
This isn’t to say others aren’t scanning their local newspapers – we know some heard of local entities (businesses and libraries) working toward that goal. But this post was intended to list the largest, statewide, and (mostly) freely searchable endeavors. Know of others? Tell us.
Looking for a newspaper that isn’t online (yet)? Through your local public library, you can most likely loan and view newspaper microfilm from the State Library of North Carolina. This Newspaper Locator may be helpful if you want to determine some of the titles published in a specific area.
North Carolinians are heavily involved in efforts to preserve born-digital news. The Educopia Institute, located in Greensboro, is spearheading a conversation that brings in news producers and cultural heritage professionals to talk about our disappearing journalistic heritage. At their website you can learn more about the Memory Hole events and read a white paper on Newspaper Preservation.
Carrier boy with newspapers. 1965, Courtesy East Carolina University Digital Collections
Here’s what we know:
Researchers love newspapers.
Libraries and archives love newspapers.
North Carolina has produced a lot of newspapers.
No, really. There. are. a. lot.
Well, we do know a little bit more than that, but those are the Cliff’s Notes of our newspaper story. Because we work with so many papers, we try and stay on top of what’s happening with newspaper digitization in the state and around the country. We thought we’d write a few blog posts to share some of what we’ve seen and are seeing in that area, and to help get the word out that there’s a lot happening in this space in North Carolina.
So, why is digitizing and sharing newspapers online so tough?
Quantity
There are a lot of them. We’re saying it once more simply because it is the most costly factor in digitization and preservation. Let’s take, for example, a weekly newspaper published from 1870-1920. That’s over 2,500 issues. Say each issue is 8 pages long. Now we’re up to 20,000+ pages. And let’s say there’s one of those types of papers in every county. We’re already at 2 million pages for the state, for only 50 years. This is hugely conservative, considering many counties had more than one paper. And we didn’t even talk about papers published by schools, companies, or ambitious individuals. Or about dailies…
By our estimation, digitization of just the microfilmed newspapers located in the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill would result in over 40 million pages, which means 40 million digitized images. That could be upwards of 180 TB of data. For JUST storage (not including serving this up to the web, maintenance, staff) you’d pay a paltry $6,000 per month*.
We kid you not.
Size
Beside quantity, the remaining challenges look petite. Broadside newspaper pages need a larger scanner than most institutions can afford, especially if the papers are bound. Tabloid sized pages won’t fit on typical flatbed scanners either, and we rarely recommend flatbeds for something like this because they’re just too slow.
Material
Although uniform, which is a plus, historic newspapers can be fragile, friable, and fiddly. The more carefully you have to handle material when you digitize, the more time you’re going to need.
Text-Heavy
Having images of newspapers is really helpful. It’s portable, physically compact, and easier to copy. But the true advantage of a digital version is when it’s full-text searchable. Full-text searchability across large quantities of files requires indexing and search software, and enough IT infrastructure to make that happen.
Rights
While most newspapers published before 1923 can be safely shared online, those published in the years since can have attendant rights issues (pun intended). The massive changes in newspaper ownership over the last 20 years can make institutions wary about publishing a paper from 1924 or 1994.
Oh My.
Hopefully it’s clearer now why more historic newspapers aren’t yet freely available online. Albeit daunting, the challenges mentioned above are all surmountable with enough resources (money and expertise) and time. In our next blog post we’ll highlight where you can find historic North Carolina newspapers online right this very minute.
Mr. and Miss School Spirit, 1965, Junius H. Rose High School
We just finished working with East Carolina University to digitize over 60 high school yearbooks from the eastern part of the state. While predominantly from Pitt County, there are also yearbooks from Beaufort, Craven, Edgecombe, Franklin, Lenoir, and Wilson Counties, as well as the first yearbooks we have on the site from Greene, Halifax, and Washington counties. Below is a list of the schools represented, and the years added.
These are the first high school yearbooks contributed from East Carolina University. You can view more yearbooks, by school, on our North Carolina Yearbooks page.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
Since 1751, North Carolina newspapers have been one of the most valuable resources for researching our state’s history. They are also one of the most prolific, and demand for newspaper digitization is an area where we struggle even making a dent.
