Our friends at the Arizona Digital Newspaper Project blogged about the annual National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) Awardee Conference. We’ll have our own recap very soon!
Tag Archives: chronicling america
VTDNP attending NDNP Awardee Meeting 2013
Project Director (Birdie MacLennan), Project Librarian (Erenst Anip), and Digital Support Specialist (Karyn Norwood) will be attending the National Digital Newspaper Project (NDNP) Awardee Meeting, September 11-13 in Washington DC.
Karyn will have a poster presentation:
Bennington Opera House: Early 20th Century Entertainment in Rural Vermont
Through the lens of historic newspaper advertisements and articles, I delved into the history of a rural Vermont town’s opera house in the early twentieth century.
Erenst will do a lightning talk:
[Still] Bringing the Past to the People
Following up last year’s topic on ‘Outreach, value added content, and utilizing Chronicling America in Hawai’i’ and now Vermont. This presentation was originally done at the recent IFLA WLIC 2013 in Singapore. The NDNP version will include a recap of what we have learned.
Birdie will also do a lightning talk:
Newspapers in a Global Microcosm: Updates & Activities from IFLA
An overview and summary of IFLA Newspapers Section activities from the 2013 IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore — including highlights from the Newspapers Section main conference programme and from the Satellite pre-conference developed in collaboration with the IFLA Genealogical and Local History Section (GENLOC). NDNP was well represented. IFLA is also planning a mid-year international newspaper conference for February 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Additional details will be forthcoming. The Call for Papers is now available.
More on these presentations after the meeting.
“Responsible for A Good Paper”
In the spring of 1919, William Dudley Pelley, the owner and editor of St. Johnsbury’s Evening Caledonian, took the unusual step of listing all of the paper’s staff on the masthead, under the heading “Responsible for a good newspaper in St. Johnsbury.”
Pelley was a successful short story writer, and we learn more about the Caledonian staff from one of his stories that appeared in the November 1919 issue of American Magazine. A photograph of the Caledonian staff accompanies “Human Nature–As the Country Editor Knows It.” Pelley provided a lengthy caption that describes what he saw as the duties and talents of the five women and five men standing in front of the paper’s office on Eastern Avenue.
From left to right, some highlights from Pelley’s caption:
- Robert MacKinnon, “who keeps the creditors sweet” and “sees that the books show a profit.”
- Miles S. Gilman, “who joshes the typesetting machines into getting out the news.”
- Mrs. Alice Massey, “our little lady reporter, who knows everybody in town and everything that happens in the community.”
- Miss Margaret Robie, “society editor, proof reader, and trouble-fixer.”
- Miss Florence Rouse, “the girl who is never in a hurry, but does more work than all the rest of the office put together” and “general all-around assistant to the Boss.
- The Boss (Pelley).
- Miss Ruth Impey, “who operates another one of the typesetting machines” and “whose proof is as pure as a baby’s smile.”
- Arthur Boucher, who “sees that the paper is printed on the big Duplex in such shape that the town can read it without having to go and wash its fingers afterward.”
- Mrs. A.M. Moran, “who never took a back seat when it came to setting ads that made the lives of the local merchants a pleasure and a joy.”
- Ray Packard, “the man who bosses the whole push.”
They were, Pelley concluded, “a happy bunch who never speak a cross word to one another.”
Issues of the weekly Caledonian from 1837 to 1884 are available now on Chronicling America, and more years of the weekly and the daily Evening Caledonian will be added soon.
Four new NDNP Partners announced for 2013-15 cycle
From the National Endowment for the Humanities:
The NEH has issued a press release announcing new awards (see https://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2013-07-25), including four cooperative agreements to state projects joining the NDNP this year. We will be welcoming representatives from the following new partners at the September 11-13 meeting in DC: Connecticut, Florida and Puerto Rico, Idaho, and Mississippi.
In addition, we are making NDNP supplement awards to ten current projects for the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
Congratulations (and welcome) to new and old partners!
National History Day: Historic American Newspapers Prize Winners
The NEH Web site has a new feature regarding the prizes awarded last week to the winners of the 2013 National History Day (NHD) contest.
The winners of the “Chronicling America” awards are:
- Junior Category- Richard Hernasy from St. Dominic Savio Home School in Mills River, North Carolina, for his documentary “Unexpected Verdict: The Trial of John Peter Zenger;”
- Senior Category- Joanna Slusarewicz from the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington, Kentucky, for her documentary “It’s a Jungle Out There: Upton Sinclair Turns the Tables on the Chicago Meatpackers and the Food Industry,”
Congratulations to the winners~!