(May, 2017) WOODSIDE, Calif. – Woodside High School’s paper Woodside World recently became the first high school newspaper in California to be digitized and added to the massive California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC), according to Brian Geiger, Director of the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Bibliographical Studies & Research, which manages the CDNC.
The CDNC now contains past printed issues of Woodside World from 1959 to 2009, before the paper converted to digital copies. Anyone interested in taking a glimpse into the past or a walk down memory lane is encouraged to explore these issues here.
The CDNC launched in 2007 to provide the public an online database that is text searchable and free to use. It now contains over 2 million pages from newspapers around the state, from the very first paper, the Californian, started in 1846, to contemporary titles delivered as PDFs. All issues are preserved as high-resolution TIFF images and processed to be fully text-searchable.
“Small newspapers and libraries increasingly cannot afford the cost of microfilming these publications,” said Geiger. “We see collecting PDFs as a way to save California’s printed history. We’re targeting small local weeklies, the ones that are least likely to be saving their papers.”
Previous Woodside HS journalism teacher Jenny Bratton spearheaded the project two years ago with a teacher grant from the Woodside High School Foundation. She enlisted her journalism students to sort through hundreds of existing issues of The Woodside World, which was the close equivalent to 2,000 pages. The issues were then shipped to Backstage Library Works in Bethlehem, PA., where each page was scanned to create archival digital images. Those images were then digitized following standards established by the Library of Congress to generate searchable digital files.
“We hope to include other high schools papers in the future,” said Geiger. “They are of course of interest to school alumni. More generally, researchers interested in exploring issues like student activism benefit from having access to multiple titles searchable in one archive.”
We see collecting PDFs as a way to save California’s printed history.
— Brian Geiger
The CDNC is currently working with the California State Library to digitize at least one title per county up through 1923. They also regularly partner with local institutions to digitize their newspapers. And they have an ongoing partnership with Ancestry.com, which to date has digitized over 4 million pages that will be included in the CDNC.
The physical paper issues of the Woodside World were donated to the Historical Society and are now being housed in archival boxes to preserve them for posterity. They are available for public viewing by appointment.
