By Rachel Terlep
NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Reliving the most significant moments in IU Southeast history will soon be a click away.
The Horseshoe Foundation of Floyd County recently awarded IU Southeast an $8,000 grant to create the Indiana University Southeast Student Newspaper Digital Archive. The archive will provide public access to student-created newspapers from 1947 to the present by professionally microfilming and digitizing the print newspapers stored in the IU Southeast Library.
A 1971 issue of the IU Southeast student newspaper, then called “The Student.”
According to associate librarian Melanie Hughes, who wrote the grant application, the purpose of the Student Newspaper Archive is for the public to have easy, online access to the newspaper to learn more about IU Southeast and the region it serves.
Alumni who want to reminisce about their college days, genealogists, local historians, researchers of college life and university staff who want to look at history and trends will be able to quickly find names and information through full-text searching.
“This will help preserve the newspapers, which have been seeing more interest and usage in recent years, especially with the 75th anniversary of IU Southeast and the bicentennial of Indiana University,” Hughes said. “The newspapers capture the history and spirit of our campus, as well as other events in Southern Indiana.”
The newspaper collection currently resides in folders and boxes locked in the IU Southeast Library archive. The newspaper covers campus, local, national and world events as told by student reporters. Digitizing these stories enables IU Southeast to access and share important people and events in both campus and local history — including the relocation of IU Southeast from Jeffersonville to New Albany, the story of Olympian swimmer Camille Wright and columns by longtime Southern Indiana writer Dale Moss.
“We will be preserving a window to the past for the residents of our community — now, into the future and into our next bicentennial,” Hughes said.
The microfilming and digitization process will begin with library staff sorting, stacking, documenting and packaging of the loose newspapers to be sent to a professional digitization company. The project expected to take one year and will be completed in the summer of 2017.
Feature photo: IU Southeast associate librarian Melanie Hughes (second on left) and Vice Chancellor for Advancement Betty Russo (right) accept an $8,000 grant from The Horseshoe Foundation of Floyd County at a ceremony in downtown New Albany on June 29.