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Washington Digital Newspapers Collection Exceeds Half a Million Pages!

Washington Digital Newspapers Collection Exceeds Half a Million Pages!

Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, recently wrapped up several large digitization projects and achieved some significant milestones that expanded its Washington Digital Newspapers (WDN) online collection to over 500,000 newspaper pages. The WDN program selects historic newspapers, prepares them for online searching, and hosts them on the Library’s WDN website as a free public resource. Visitors to the website will find Washington newspapers from the state’s territorial days through the early 2000s,…

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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY — LANGLEY, WASHINGTON, 100 YEARS AGO: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY — LANGLEY, WASHINGTON, 100 YEARS AGO: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

From 1920 to 1922, an all-woman cohort of councilmembers and mayor governed the town of Langley on Whidbey Island, Washington. Langley has the distinction of being the second town in the United States to elect an all-woman administration. Helen Coe served as mayor during this period. In July 1921, she purchased and deeded land to the Ladies’ Civic Improvement Club to erect a community building, which would include a public library, auditorium, and reading rooms. The 100-year-old library, now part…

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DEER IN THE HEADLINES

DEER IN THE HEADLINES

A herd of reindeer in Seattle? It happened. These reindeer, photographed in Seattle, may have been part of a government relief effort in the winter of 1897-1898. The expedition was launched when news reached the public that numerous miners, lured to Alaska in the hopes of striking it rich during the Klondike Gold Rush, were stranded in Dawson City, Canada, with supply lines cut off for the winter. If these reindeer were part of that expedition, they and their herders…

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Left: Mary Ann Olander, 7 1/2, with her dog, Laddie, and cat, Queenie, picketing against the Sputnik 2 rocket. Right: Laika the dog.
PICKETING SPUTNIK: ANIMAL RIGHTS AT THE DAWN OF THE SPACE AGE

PICKETING SPUTNIK: ANIMAL RIGHTS AT THE DAWN OF THE SPACE AGE

Librarians at Washington State Library are often found serving their customers at one of several microfilm machines, carefully searching among hundreds of Washington newspapers past and present for that elusive article or photo. Sometimes a diligent search can reveal a serendipitous and very curious find, which can make a librarian’s entire day. For example, the front page of the Nov. 7, 1957, Bremerton Sun shows a young animal-rights activist named Mary Ann Olander (age 7 1/2) along with her dog,…

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Washington Water Power facility overlooking Spokane Falls.
HIDDEN COLLECTION GIVES INSIGHT INTO THE DEBATE BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE UTILITIES

HIDDEN COLLECTION GIVES INSIGHT INTO THE DEBATE BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE UTILITIES

From the 1930s through at least the 1950s, there was tension between “public power” advocates and supporters of privately owned power utilities. The tension is reflected in the fact that many counties and municipalities own and operate their own public utilities, while Spokane’s electrical power comes from a publicly traded corporation called Avista (formerly Washington Water Power [WWP]). In 2021 Eastern Regional Branch Archivist Lee Pierce uncovered a nearly forgotten collection that provides researchers with something of an insider’s view…

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Blog header image of a newspaper headline, The New Year. Coulee City dispatch. (Coulee City, WA), Jan. 8, 1942.
BREAKING NEWS! MORE HISTORIC WASHINGTON NEWSPAPERS ONLINE

BREAKING NEWS! MORE HISTORIC WASHINGTON NEWSPAPERS ONLINE

2020 was an extraordinary year for many reasons, all of which have been immortalized in catchy headlines and sensational news stories. Future generations will marvel at these stories and wonder how we coped during these extraordinary times. Much like how we look back on years past and wonder about the issues and challenges our recent ancestors endured. Yet thanks to the Washington State Library’s Washington Digital Newspapers (WDN) program – funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)…

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WASHINGTON WOMEN PROJECT HIGHLIGHTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF NOTEWORTHY WASHINGTON WOMEN

WASHINGTON WOMEN PROJECT HIGHLIGHTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF NOTEWORTHY WASHINGTON WOMEN

Picture it: the year is 1985. A group of children excitedly swap trading cards in a Washington state schoolyard. “I have an extra Dunbar!” “I need a Russ!” Baseball cards? No, they’re Washington Women trading cards! In 1980, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction began work on the Washington Women project to highlight the accomplishments of noteworthy women in Washington. Deirdre O’Neill, an associate instructor at the University of Washington, interviewed several hundred candidates for the project with…

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Goodbye and Hello

Goodbye and Hello

Did you know that the Washington State Library was one of the first state agencies to jump into blogging? We’ve been blogging since 2006. Our loyal readers will remember Steve Willis’s “Random News” posts, the fascinating newspaper stories that Marlys Rudeen unearthed, Rand Simmon’s well researched articles on Federal documents, or the wonderful Washington Reads book recommendations, as well as all the other stories about the State Library written over the years. However, after all these years of maintaining our own…

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Girl wearing VR headset
Reality Check

Reality Check

From the Desk of Joe Olayvar If you haven’t noticed, there’s a device craze going on.  Nearly everywhere you look in any town or city across the globe, someone is absorbed in conversation, web searching, or game play.  Yes, we’ve come a long way since the Atari or the early phone and its five pound battery pack.  But like every technology, there’s always something new that will eventually overshadow it, or at least add a new facet; in this case,…

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Zine winners collage
Announcing the winners of our 3rd Annual Zine contest!

Announcing the winners of our 3rd Annual Zine contest!

How many of us remember sitting through dry history classes in school?  And yet history done right is a fascinating and important subject.  Here at the Washington State Library we take history seriously.  One of our strategic goals is to “Preserve and share Washington’s stories.” We have several paths to achieving this goal. There are our historic digital newspapers, the digitized “Classics in Washington History” collection, our collection of Historic maps, and the  Washington Rural Heritage Collection.  But making the resources…

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