Digitization Projects: UConn’s Student Newspaper Digitized and Online

From the University of Connecticut:

In its 116 year existence, UConn’s student newspaper has transitioned from a four-page black and white monthly publication into the highest circulation college daily newspaper in Connecticut. Now its readership is about to get another boost when the UConn Libraries digitizes issues dating back to its origins and places them online.
“We get requests about the Daily Campus on a fairly regular basis,” says University Archivist Betsy Pittman, a proponent of the initiative, which began in the spring of 2012. While the Archives holds bound copies as well as issues on microfilm, the film was starting to show wear from usage, giving impetus to the digitization effort, she said. That usage, coupled with a strong desire to provide the campus community and other interested parties with 24/7 access was the rationale for the project.
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When the project is completed, readers will be able to view each issue in its entirety and track the evolution of the University and its student newspaper from the Storrs Agricultural College’s The Lookout, a monthly publication, which debuted in May, 1896. It transitioned to a twice monthly publication in 1899, when it became the Connecticut Agricultural School, and to The Connecticut Campus in 1914, which became a weekly and later a thrice weekly publication, followed by the Connecticut Daily Campus, and then finally the Daily Campus in 1984.
Thus far, years 1896 to 1906 have been completed and may be viewed in the University’s institutional repository, UConn’s Digital Commons.
Other issues of the newspaper will be added as they are digitized with issues published through 1990 expected to be completed by next summer.

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, Libraries, News, Open Access