VTDNP members Chris Kirby and Tom McMurdo joined the Boston Public Library’s Chrissy Rissmeyer at the Massachusetts Library Conference in Late April for a presentation: “Spread the News: the National Digital Newspaper Program.” Chrissy outlined a potential Massachusetts digital newspaper project component of the NDNP. Chris described Vermont’s process of applying for the NDNP grant, organizing the structure of the VTDNP, and pulling together resources for a successful project. I (Tom) outlined the processes involved in going from film in a drawer to an online digital image. The presentation was well received and generated enthusiasm for the VTDNP, the potential Boston Public Library-based Massachusetts!
state project, and helped stimulate further discussions about NDNP participation in other New England states.

Chrissy and her colleagues at the Boston Public Library were welcoming, fun hosts. The organizers of the Massachusetts Library Conference put on an interesting event that I would recommend attending!

In other news, newspaper digitization keeps rolling along here. We are poised to send our first batch to the Library of Congress. The batch, which will be submitted this week, contains nearly 10,000 pages. It is composed of issues of the Rutland Herald from 1836-1854, the Vermont Farmer from St. Johnsbury, dating from 1872-1877, and the first part of the Burlington Weekly Free Press, with issues from 1836-1864. We look forward to seeing our state’s newspapers available on the Chronicling America website (available here: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/), hopefully before the end of summer. It is our understanding that the Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press will be the first NDNP titles from the 1830s, as no other NDNP participants have submitted material that extends to the earliest years of the grant period.

The VTDNP is continuing work on the Burlington Free Press weekly edition. We plan to scan issues from 1836 to 1920 of that title. This long run should provide researchers with a long running history of not only Burlington, but statewide news, and a Vermont-based perspective on world events.

The weekly Free Press, weekly Rutland Herald, and Vermont Farmer are just the first three titles our advisory board selected for the grant. We will be working on digitizing titles throughout Vermont from the 1836-1922 grant period. Here’s the complete list:

Vermont Farmer – St. Johnsbury, Vermont, 1872-1877

Rutland Herald weekly titles – 1836-1854

Burlington Free Press weekly edition – 1836-1920

Rutland Daily Globe – 1873-1877

Windham County Democrat – Brattleboro, VT, 1837-1853

Vermont Transcript – St. Albans, VT, 1864-1870

Vermont Phoenix – Brattleboro, VT, 1836-1922

State Journal/Watchman title family – Montpelier, VT, 1836-1910

Middlebury Register title family, 1836-1922

Spirit of the Age, Woodstock, VT, 1840-1913

and portions of the following two titles, dates to be determined:

Caledonian, St. Johnsbury, VT, begin 1837, and Bennington Banner titles, begin 1858.

We will be working on these titles into summer of 2012, and we will announce each title as it becomes available on the Chronicling America site. We will continue to provide background and context for these titles to inform your understanding of our work.

– Tom McMurdo

Members of the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project’s advisory committee are currently identifying historical Vermont newspapers to digitize. This is no small task, as they have over 500 titles to consider.
In August 1905, Charles S. Forbes devoted an issue of his monthly periodical, The Vermonter, to an extensive history of the Vermont press. Forbes charts the establishment of weekly papers by decade, as shown in the table below.

Weekly Papers Established in Vermont 1780-1905

To emphasize how phenomenal this activity was, Forbes noted that the number of newspapers established was much greater than the increase in the state’s population. Many of these weeklies lasted only for short periods. According to Forbes, in 1850 there were just 35 weeklies in print. In 1905, he identified 84 weekly papers in print.
Vermont papers also issued daily editions, beginning with the Daily Free Press in 1848. Forbes lists 25 dailies that were established between 1848 and 1905. Again, over half had ceased; only 10 were being published in 1905.

– Prudence Doherty, VTDNP Project Management Group

Chris Kirby and Tom McMurdo of the VTDNP will join Boston Public Library Digital Projects Metadata Librarian Chrissy Watkins Rissmeyer this Wednesday, April 27, at 10:30 AM at the Massachusetts Library Conference to discuss the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project and a potential Massachusetts NDNP project. Consult the conference website for information about attending: https://www.masslib.net/conference/2011Conference/.

Thursday, April 21, 5:00 pm., Special Collections Reading Room, Bailey/Howe Library

Deborah Thomas, Program Coordinator for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) at the Library of Congress, will talk about the effort to digitize historically significant newspapers from all over the United States and make them freely available through Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, a web site hosted by the Library of Congress.

In 2010 the University of Vermont of Vermont Libraries was awarded an NDNP grant to support the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project. The UVM Libraries and the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Ilsley Public Library of Middlebury, and the Vermont Historical Society will digitize up to 100,000 pages of Vermont newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. The digitized newspapers will be available to the public via Chronicling America.

Staff from the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project, including Project Director Birdie MacLennan and Project Librarian Tom McMurdo, will talk about the Vermont project following Deborah Thomas’s presentation.

The presentation is free and open to the public.  For more information, call 802-656-1493 or email uvmsc@uvm.edu.

One of the first digitization projects we are working on here at the VTDNP is the Burlington Free Press from 1836-1848. We are also working on the Rutland Herald from 1836-1854, and the Vermont Farmer from St. Johnsbury in the 1870s. Today, I want to share some quick scans from the Burlington Free Press. (These are scans from the film that has been in use for some years, and are not as high quality as the final product will be.)

These great titles are loaded with wonderful history of Vermont from the early to mid 19th century. As I have been working with these titles, I find that my attention is often drawn to the advertisements. The advertisements are dominated by patent medicines for any number of conditions we scarcely think of today, like worms, scrofula, the vague category of “blood disorders,” and all of the medicines for weak and ill children. It is humbling to see these advertisements. It is a reminder of how hard life was for our forebears, armed only with these often useless defenses against pain, suffering and death.

Mixed in with these advertisements are notices that exemplify the charm and simplicity of those days. These two, both from 1838, depict a common problem people in the Burlington area had–animals straying off or straying on to their land (click them for a larger version):

Other ads give a much different view of life in the era. If you think bankruptcy today is bad, take a look at this ad from September 2, 1838:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I certainly wouldn’t want to be Benjamin Thompson (if that was his real name) if they ever caught up with him.

 

This remarkable ad from May 6, 1836 shows a traveling “Zoological Exhibition” that features a “Unicorn” (rhinoceros):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many interesting articles and advertisements, I can scarcely begin to share them here. One article that I encountered from August 30, 1838 that may be of particular interest is this piece where the editor of the Free Press complains at length about the cost of the new Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier:

(Click the image to see a larger, eye-readable version.)

This title for 1836-1848 will be one of the first available that we digitize, along with the Rutland Herald for 1836-1854. I hope to bring you similar highlights from the Rutland Herald in the near future. These titles, and all of the titles we are working with, open a fascinating window into an era that is populated by wandering horses, incredible animals, and people very much like us making the best of their lives. We are looking forward to bringing you all of these titles fully digitized and searchable in collections online.

– Tom McMurdo, VTDNP Project Librarian