The following guest post from Aaron O’Donovan (aodonovan@columbuslibrary.org), Columbus Metropolitan Library Special Collections Manager, is part of a series written by members of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories and underrepresented voices.
As a local history and genealogy department in a public library, our materials run the gamut from books from the 1700s about the creation of our country to yearbooks of local high schools that patrons like to peruse for nostalgia’s sake. In addition to our approximately 90,000 reference books, our archives room holds approximately 2,500 linear feet of photographic material, records, and manuscript material. We are constantly seeking new opportunities to expand access to our collections for our patrons, and when the opportunity arose to digitize materials as part of the Community Webs program, I knew what I wanted to digitize first: local neighborhood newspapers of Columbus.
We joined the Community Webs program in 2017 to archive important cultural and local government websites of Columbus, Ohio. The catalyst for the project was the belief that we had done a good job of telling the story of Columbus in its first 150 years, but we were missing telling the story of the evolution of the city of the more recent past, as well as failing to record the present. With the object of capturing more recent changes to our city, we focused on archiving our city government website, as well as archiving social service websites, especially those helping new immigrants in our city. Because of the Community Webs program, we were able to take a snapshot of the diverse populations that were making their homes in Columbus, and the medium of web archiving was the only way we were able to tell the stories of these new immigrant communities including the Somalian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and Mexican populations. To further this focus on migration patterns into Columbus, we felt it was important to make our neighborhood newspapers that we had on microfilm accessible because the neighborhood newspapers featured stories and obituaries on immigrant populations who came to Columbus in the mid-19th century and early 20th century.
The newspapers had been preserved on microfilm for decades, but we were never able to digitize them due the time commitment involved for a project that size. During my time in the local history field in Columbus, it has become clear to me that our library patrons crave hyper-local history material that personally connects their stories to the place they live. While general local history topics about Columbus are popular, nothing is more popular in our library than content generated from Columbus neighborhoods. To finally get an opportunity to digitize neighborhood newspapers and make them accessible to our patrons was one that I could not pass up.
The most important newspaper for the library to digitize was the Columbus Call and Post, a historic Black newspaper that served Columbus from 1962-2007. For years patrons have asked us if the newspaper was digitized, but unfortunately all the library had was microfilm starting in 1972, which was very difficult to browse and ultimately did not serve our patron’s needs for accessibility. Because the Internet Archive performed optical character recognition (OCR) on the text of the newspapers, researchers can now use keyword searching to find an address, a business name, or search for personal names to find news stories that mention the people and places that they hold in their memory.
Digitizing the microfilm of the Call and Post also complemented another project we began several years ago when we partnered with the King Arts Complex to digitize the photograph archive of the iconic newspaper, which was donated to the organization in the mid-1990s. Many of the photographs in the collection have little to no information attached to them (information written on the back of the photographic prints, the name of the photographer, etc.). Digitization of the Call and Post provided additional information to match and apply to the photographs in the archive, adding an enhanced level of searchability and accessibility to this collection. The collections work together to preserve Black history in a way that was not possible before because much of the content from the Call and Post was unique and rare. Being able to bring this newspaper back into the public consciousness has been a thrilling experience for us.
As the project continued to take shape, we felt it was important to represent Columbus neighborhoods geographically, which also enabled us to represent different economic and ethnically diverse communities throughout Columbus history. Our most accessed newspaper thus far has been the Hilltop Record, a title which focused on a local neighborhood with strong Appalachian ties and has a long history of covering the issues of working-class citizens on the westside of Columbus. Other digitized community newspapers include :
· TheLinden NE News showcases stories from north Columbus, an area that has experienced several demographic shifts throughout its 100 years of history.
The rarest newspapers digitized for this project were also some of the oldest newspapers that were preserved on microfilm in our collection. Among those titles are the Ohio Columbian(1853-1856), an anti-slavery newspaper that reported on Underground Railroad activities as they were happening in Ohio and surrounding states. It has potential for illuminating our understanding and knowledge of individuals that were involved in assisting enslaved people seeking freedom in the 1850s. Other newspapers with great research potential include early (and shorter) runs of Black newspapers that have not been digitized before this project including The Columbus Recorder (1927),The Columbus Voice (1929), which was edited by Florence W. Oakfield,and The Ohio Torch (1928-1930), the longest running newspaper for the Black community during the 1920s. We are excited to report that researchers are already using these resources to better understand Columbus history more objectively and completely.
With this support from the Internet Archive and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we have been able to help our local users find information that was not available elsewhere. Recently, we had a researcher request an obituary from June of 1964 when our two major newspapers were on strike. Thankfully, the South Side Spectator had been digitized and was available through the Internet Archive. Our librarian was able to locate the obituary that was only available in that newspaper. We also got this enthusiastic email from a regular library patron after we informed them that we had digitized the Hilltop Record and it was now keyword searchable on the Internet Archive: “OH MY GOSH! ARE YOU SERIOUS!?! THAT’S FANTASTIC! Have I told you lately how much I love you guys? You rock my world! Thank you so much for everything you do. I am so grateful for everyone in Local History & Genealogy.”
Moreover, the librarians are using the digitized newspapers in regular programming, furthering our promotion of these new digitized collections. Every month the library hosts a virtual Black Heritage Collection Spotlight on a notable person or topic from Black history in Columbus. The images and news articles from the digitized Call and Post are used frequently for the program, and we look forward to learning about more ways the digitized newspapers are used in local research to highlight and deepen our community’s connections to Columbus’ past.
The Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
The following guest post from Dee Bowers (they/them), Archives Manager at the Brooklyn Public Library Center for Brooklyn History, is part of a series written by members of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories and underrepresented voices.
Some say as many as one in seven Americans have family roots in Brooklyn, and I expect the newly digitized Brooklyn city directories now available through the Internet Archive will get heavy use from genealogists, historians, authors, journalists, students, and even artists to trace connections to the diverse and ever-changing borough.
Title page, Spooner’s Brooklyn Directory 1822. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
In addition to helping us preserve this web-based content, Community Webs has now also made it possible to increase access to our physical collections through digitization. As part of the Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections project, made possible by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we were able to partner with the Internet Archive to digitize 236 microfiche sheets of Brooklyn city directories.
Microfiche sheet from the Brooklyn city directories, 1822. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
These directories show the movement, growth, and changing nature of immigrant populations in Brooklyn in the early to mid 19th century and help document the immigrant experience by providing data on the residency and, in some cases, ethnicities of Brooklynites over time. We knew that expanding digital access would be extremely useful to the many researchers who use our online resources, especially since our number one research topic is genealogy. The project is also directly in line with our mission:
“Democratize access to Brooklyn’s history and be dedicated to expanding and diversifying representation of the history of the borough by unifying resources and expertise, and broadening reach and impact.“
By increasing the visibility of these collections through digitization and freely available public access, researchers and historians will have a richer, more accessible view into the diversity of American history. The history of Brooklyn is extraordinarily diverse but, like many archives, our collections don’t always tell the fullness of those stories. By expanding access to our city directories, we provide insight into earlier residents of Brooklyn and enable diverse communities to trace their Brooklyn roots to a greater degree.
Screenshot of the early Brooklyn directories in the Internet Archive.
Here’s an example of how the directories look in theInternet Archive. In this screenshot above, they include content outside of just directory listings. In this case, there’s a chronological listing of “memoranda” – notable moments in Brooklyn history – including “June 11, 1812 – News received in Brooklyn, of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain.”
One example of research that can be conducted with these directories is finding out more about early Black Brooklynites. Slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827, so the earliest days of post-enslavement Brooklyn are represented in the digitized directories.
Screenshot of 1857 directory on the Internet Archive with the highlighted surname “Hodges.”
By searching the text of the directories using keywords, I picked out an individual to learn more about, Rev. William J. Hodges, who lived on Broadway in Brooklyn in 1857. By cross-referencing with our digitized newspapers, I was able to find out more about him and his abolitionist activism in Brooklyn and beyond. It turns out he was not born in Brooklyn, nor did he reside there very long, but he did make an impact during his time there, as he founded the Colored Political Association of Kings County (which is the modern-day borough of Brooklyn).
“Local Items,” June 5 1856, Brooklyn Times Union, page 2.
If not for the digitized city directories, I doubt I ever would have learned of Rev. Hodges and his time in Brooklyn. I hope that many more stories like these will emerge once researchers start digging into these directories.
Directory advertisement for T. Reeve, Architect and Builder.
The directories also contain items like this – an advertisement showing this architect and builder’s office on Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn. This part of Brooklyn looks very different now, and this insight into what it looked like pre-photography is invaluable, particularly for people conducting house, building, and neighborhood research.
The directories are linked on our Search Our Collections page. We also have a tutorial for using the digitized directories. Additionally, we have several related research guides which assist researchers in exploring various topics. These materials are in the public domain, and we hope they will be used for a broad spectrum of applications, from family research to demographic research to writing to artwork. We are grateful to Community Webs, the Internet Archive, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for making this material available and searchable online and allowing us to expand access across the borough, city, and beyond.
The Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
On August 13, Community Webs members from all over the US and Canada gathered in Chicago for the 2024 Community Webs National Symposium. Launched in 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program empowers public libraries and other cultural heritage organizations to document their communities. Members of the program receive access to Internet Archive’s Archive-It web archiving service and Vault digital preservation service as well as training, technical support, and opportunities for professional development.
Members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program at the Community Webs National Symposium
This event was made possible in part by support from the Mellon Foundation. Held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, this year’s symposium was an opportunity for members to learn together and connect with each other. The day was organized around two workshops designed to support the community archiving and digital preservation work happening across Community Webs member institutions.
The first workshop, “Collective Wisdom: Collaborative Learning to Support Your Community Archiving Projects,” was taught by Natalie Milbrodt, CUNY University Archivist and co-founder of the Queens Memory Project. Attendees spent time working in small groups to create definitions of “Community Archiving” and reflect on some of the shared challenges and opportunities they were experiencing when engaging in community-centered work. This workshop emphasized the value of the collective wisdom of Community Webs members and will inform future educational opportunities. The community archives focus of this workshop also supported the Community Webs Affiliates Program, which encourages relationship-building among public libraries and other community-focused cultural heritage and social service organizations to broaden access to archiving tools for documenting the lives of their patrons.
Attendees work together to discuss strategies for documenting their communities
In the second half of the day, Stacey Erdman and Jaime Schumacher of Digital POWRR led a “Walk the Workflow” workshop which demonstrated a step-by-step digital preservation process using a variety of free preservation tools including Internet Archive’s Vault digital preservation system.
A main goal for the symposium was to provide an opportunity for Community Webs members to connect and learn from each other. Throughout the day, attendees discussed projects, shared ideas, described lessons learned, and brainstormed possible avenues for future collaboration.
A digital preservation workshop provided attendees with strategies for supporting long term preservation of digital collections
The following day, Community Webs members toured the Chicago Public Library Special Collections. Johanna Russ, Unit Head for Special Collections, gave a presentation about the complex, multi-year project CPL undertook to preserve and provide access to the records of the Chicago Park District. Highlights from this collection were available for attendees to view in the reading room.
That afternoon, the Archive-It Partner Meeting provided opportunities for Community Webs members and other Archive-It users to spend some time with Internet Archive staff to discuss topics such as strategies for capturing social media and making web archives more useful.
Community Webs members view highlights from Chicago Public Library’s special collections
In-person events like this are instrumental in achieving a key goal of the program: offering opportunities for networking and professional development for Community Webs members. Internet Archive’s support for this national network of practitioners empowers their work on a local level to preserve and provide access to digital heritage sources reflecting the unique life and culture of their communities.
