by Julia Lalor, UW-Madison iSchool (’24)
When I first set out to digitize copies of the community newspaper the Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter, I was somewhat skeptical of the impact that this project would have. I took the Edgerton Public Library at its word that digital copies of this newspaper would benefit researchers, but from the outside, Edgerton looked like a quiet, rural bedroom community of Madison, and I wasn’t sure how many people would read the paper for reasons other than mild curiosity. Well, I was proven wrong on my very first day, and throughout the project I learned to appreciate the true meaning of “community” in the phrase “community newspaper.” I also was given an opportunity that can be rare for those doing back-end library and archives work: the ability to see the impact my work could have on patrons.
Now that I’ve hopefully hooked you, dear reader, I’m going to back up and give an overview of the project and how one scans and creates metadata for a 19th century newspaper. The Edgerton Reporter is a community newspaper in Edgerton, Wisconsin that has been publishing issues continuously for over 150 years. Its oldest issues were published under the name the Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter, back when Edgerton had booming industries in cigar-making and tobacco-growing. I worked on issues published from 1885-1887. These newspaper copies were in bound volumes, which is a handy way to look through papers for research but a poor way to keep newspapers for long-term preservation. Many of the pages were torn or even missing due to friction from the loosening binding. After every shift I spent time sweeping up dozens of tiny newspaper crumbles and fragments that resulted from even my gentle handling of the volumes. I used a special translucent archival tape to mend rips and reattach pages (Here is where archivists will scream, “Tape?!” But I promise, it’s not your average tape. It’s Neschen Filmoplast P!). I chose not to separate the newspapers from their binding due to time constraints and because the volumes could lay quite flat due to their age.
The Prairie Lakes Library System IT team provided a CZUR Aura scanner, which is a pretty nifty portable scanner that folds up small. However, it was actually a little too small for my purposes. Beth Krebs-Smith, the library director, had the idea to place the scanner on top of a small archival box so that the camera could capture an entire newspaper page. This made the scanner resolution a little worse but seemed like the best course of action. From there I set the scanner settings to comply with FADGI recommendations for file format, resolution, bit depth, etc., and commenced scanning. I only completed light edits of the scans, including rotating and cropping, and then exported the scans as TIFF files, creating both master preservation files and files that would be used for uploading to the digital content asset management system (DAMS).
The DAMS used by PLLS is ResCarta, an open-source platform. It has a metadata template specifically for newspapers, which made recording elements like the newspaper issue and publisher easy. I tried my best to follow Dublin Core element recommendations, although not every element mapped to those available in ResCarta. One thing to note about ResCarta if you are thinking about using it for your own project is that you cannot bulk-upload metadata through a spreadsheet like you can for some DAMS. I created metadata within ResCarta for each individual issue of newspaper. You also cannot pull authorized headings directly from controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, so I had to enter those manually and record the source I got them from. I ended up making a lot of local headings as well for authors in the paper and otherwise notable townsfolk. The tricky thing about making metadata is that you’ll want to read every piece of text on the page, and you just can’t do that. I stuck to noting down author names, nearby town names, and subjects that were given a longer treatment. The other tricky thing about making metadata is that it’s all relative and up to your best judgement. So, any mistakes made through the course of this project are mine and mine alone!
If this whole process sounds a bit dry to you, well…it can be. That’s not to say it’s not important work, but scanning newspapers for eight hours or even creating metadata for that amount of time is not the most dynamic or riveting task. Two things got me through: thrillers on audiobook, and some insightful conversations I had on my first day of work. Two different patrons came up to me separately from each other that day, both older men local to Edgerton who were apparently local historians and passionate about Edgerton’s history. The first man seemed curious but skeptical about my project due its digital focus (he had only gotten the Internet at his house within the last year); the second seemed concerned, considering the fragile nature of the papers, since he was a frequent user of the newspaper collection. Both men taught me new information about the library’s history room and its contents, such as the obituary files and the fact that some newer issues of the Reporter were actually in worse condition than the 19th century ones because they were used more often. Both demonstrated to me how much Edgerton had changed as a town over time and the power of highly localized history. I was very thankful to these two gentlemen who, although they were only speaking to me to satisfy their own curiosity, helped make meaning out of a project that would otherwise be a very solitary expedition. Our conversations helped fuel my work and keep me motivated when my zest for scanning started to flag.
I also began to see the beauty and purpose of a community newspaper once I started working on the metadata. While scanning I tried not to read too much so that I could be efficient, but I took more time with the newspaper’s contents during the metadata phase. Getting glimpses into the lives of Edgerton’s citizens and its nearby communities in Reconstruction-era America was fascinating. The stories ranged from the mundane, like who was visiting their parents out of state that week; to discomfiting, like racist cartoons (Side note: I made sure to include content warnings when I noticed items like this.); to hilarious, like the man who placed a classified ad asking for competitors in walking races and wrestling matches, only to be quickly beaten; to tragic, like the local couple who lost all four of their children to scarlet fever and then separated. I saw something of a recurring “cast of characters” and theorized familial relations between people who shared last names. The paper painted a vivid picture of Edgerton at this time, as I’m sure the modern version does today. Reading these stories helped me to further extrapolate the kinds of people who would be interested in the paper: genealogists, historians of the Reconstruction era or farming practices, sociologists, and just Edgerton super-fans like the men I encountered earlier. The digitized version of the Reporter will benefit its immediate community, but it may benefit a much wider audience as well, especially through the reach of Recollection Wisconsin.
I’ll leave you with a photo I took of a tobacco-related joke in the paper which makes one remember the phrase “local jokes get local work” (or perhaps, local “smokes” get local work?). Apologies for the poor quality; I initially took this photo just for my own amusement but wanted to share:
Julia Lalor participated in our Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative inaugural cohort in Fall 2024. For more information about this program or how to participate, visit https://recollectionwisconsin.org/rwdi.
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